Material and Methodology

Quechua communities in Highland Peru make decisions on production in their traditional open agóra (rimaypampa) for the cooperative management of crops in the "production areas" under their control (Mayer 1985). It is usually chosen to adapt the agro-ecological zoning of the communitie’s territory, or the adaptation of seeds alien to the climatic conditions in the basin of the community to be the gardens of the house instead of the experimentation. The "systems approach" as Tapia (1996, pp.96-99) corresponds to indigenous forms of thinking. That upbringing of local crops increased its biodiversity along with the customary exchange of germs as a "gift potatoes" within the networks of the Ayni. The counter-example is the "Urnfield" culture in the Pannonian Danube region, eastwards of Vienna in Europe (Childe 1926, Kohler-Schneider 2001). This culture collapsed during a climate cooling (Subatlanticum) that encouraged the expansion of the Hallstatt culture, (craddle the Celtic Culture, if not the La Téne Culture), which is no “Vavilov Culture” ^[1].

Fig 1: A time-scale analysis on Holocene climate history

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Source: http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS Essay/Climate_Change_Science.html

Note that the Urnfield culture disappeared at the end of the Bronze-age optimum rapidly, the subsequent cooling effect favored the expansion of Hallstatt and La Téne (craddles of the Celtic culture).

Paleoecologic chronology in the Andes

In the history of climate, the period known as "Intermediate Tardio" is known as the medieval warm period ", also responsible for the collapse of the Mayan culture in Mexico (Haug et.al. 2003). As the ecological zones according to Pulgar Vidal (1996) are determined on the basis of indigenous knowledge, their criteria (Table 1) allow the location of the areas in the past.

The diagnosis paleoecological Marcacocha Lake (13 ° 13 '39''S, 72 ° 12' OE, 3355 m asl) for Chepstow Lusty et.al. (2003) behind the Ollantaytambo confirms ethnohistorical information in the chronicles of Betanzos (1557), Sarmiento de Gamboa (1572) and Pachacuti Yamqui (1615) for the synoptic chronology. The multitude of their editions require to cite them in the ancient form.

For the rehabilitation of the environment and the introduction of corn agriculture in the Valley of Yucay, currently the "Sacred Valley of the Incas" there the following sites of experimentation and development of crops were used (see Tab. 3 in the original publication).

The recent research on the domestication of cassava (Manihot esculenta) by determining their origin Vaviloviano 8b around its center, located in south-eastern Brazil (Olsen, Schaal (1999) refuting Harlan (1971)); updates the issue of "Eco-border" as a dynamic factor of genetic biodiversity. In sociology, the term "society of the border" is known from Turner (1921) on the border in the history of the U.S., but there is evidence of the existence of "societies of the Front" as a genetic phenomenon among the bacteria E. Coli (Hallatschek et.al. 2007).

^[1] Here some links on Climate history are given: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/ctl/cliihis.html