Editing Bean (section)

== History ==

{{see also|Columbian exchange}}

Beans in an early cultivated form were grown in Thailand from the early seventh millennium BCE, predating ceramics.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Gorman |first=C.F. |title=Hoabinhian: A pebble-tool complex with early plant associations in southeast Asia |journal=Science |year=1969  |volume=163 |issue=3868 |pages=671–673 |doi=10.1126/science.163.3868.671 |bibcode=1969Sci...163..671G |s2cid=34052655 |pmid=17742735}}</ref> Beans were deposited with the dead in [[ancient Egypt]]. Not until the second millennium BCE did cultivated, large-seeded broad beans appear in the [[Aegean civilization|Aegean region]], [[Iberia]], and transalpine Europe.<ref>Daniel Zohary and Maria Hopf ''Domestication of Plants in the Old World'' Oxford University Press, 2012, {{ISBN|0199549060}}, p. 114.</ref> In the ''[[Iliad]]'' (8th century BCE), there is a passing mention of beans and [[chickpea]]s cast on the threshing floor.<ref>"And as in some great threshing-floor go leaping From a broad pan the black-skinned beans or peas." (''[[Iliad]]'' xiii, 589).</ref>

The oldest-known domesticated beans in the Americas were found in [[Guitarrero Cave]], [[Peru]], dated to around the second millennium BCE.<ref name=Chazan/> Genetic analyses of the common bean ''Phaseolus'' show that it originated in [[Mesoamerica]], and subsequently spread southward, along with [[maize]] and squash, traditional companion crops.<ref>{{cite journal |first1=Elena |last1=Bitocchi |first2=Laura |last2=Nanni |first3=Elisa |last3=Bellucci |first4=Monica |last4=Rossi |first5=Alessandro |last5=Giardini |first6=Pierluigi Spagnoletti |last6=Zeuli |first7=Giuseppina |last7=Logozzo |first8=Jens |last8=Stougaard |first9=Phillip |last9=McClean |first10=Giovanna |last10=Attene |first11=Roberto |last11=Papa |display-authors=5 |title=Mesoamerican origin of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is revealed by sequence data |date=3 April 2012 |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |volume=109 |issue=14 |pages=E788–E796 |doi=10.1073/pnas.1108973109 |pmid=22393017 |pmc=3325731 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

Most of the kinds of beans commonly eaten today are part of the genus ''Phaseolus'', which originated in the Americas. The first European to encounter them was [[Christopher Columbus]], while exploring what may have been the [[Bahamas]], and saw them growing in fields. Five kinds of ''[[Phaseolus]]'' beans were domesticated by pre-Columbian peoples, selecting [[Dehiscence (botany)|pods that did not open]] and scatter their seeds when ripe: common beans (''[[Phaseolus vulgaris|P. vulgaris]]'') grown from Chile to the northern part of the United States; lima and sieva beans (''[[Phaseolus lunatus|P. lunatus]]''); and the less widely distributed teparies (''[[Phaseolus acutifolius|P. acutifolius]]''), scarlet runner beans (''[[Phaseolus coccineus|P. coccineus]]''), and polyanthus beans.{{sfn|Kaplan|2008|page=30}}

[[Pre-Columbian era|Pre-Columbian]] peoples as far north as the Atlantic seaboard grew beans in the "[[Three Sisters (agriculture)|Three Sisters]]" method of [[companion planting]]. The beans were interplanted with [[maize]] and [[Cucurbita|squash]].<ref name="Mt. Pleasant 2006">{{cite book |last=Mt. Pleasant |first=Jane |editor1=Staller, John E. |editor2=Tykot, Robert H. |editor3=Benz, Bruce F. |title=Histories of Maize: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Prehistory, Linguistics, Biogeography, Domestication, and Evolution of Maize |publisher=Academic Press |location=Amsterdam |year=2006 |pages=529–537 |isbn=978-0-1236-9364-8 |chapter=The science behind the Three Sisters mound system: An agronomic assessment of an indigenous agricultural system in the northeast}}</ref> Beans were cultivated across Chile in Pre-Hispanic times, likely as far south as the [[Chiloé Archipelago]].<ref name=Alimentarias>{{Cite book |title=Chile: Plantas alimentarias Prehispánicas |last1=Pardo B. |first1=Oriana |publisher=Ediciones Parina |year=2014 |isbn=9789569120022 |edition=2015 |location=[[Arica]], Chile |pages=162 |language=Spanish |last2=Pizarro |first2=José Luis}}</ref>