the reason for the failure of Native Americans to domesticate North American apples by the time Europeans arrived lay neither with the people nor with the apples. As far as biological prerequisites for apple domestication were concerned, North American Indian farmers were like Eurasian farmers, and North American wild apples were like Eurasian wild apples. Indeed, some of the supermarket apple varieties now being munched by readers of this chapter have been developed recently by crossing Eurasian apples with wild North American apples. Instead, the reason Native Americans did not domesticate
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