Carl L. Johannessen, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Department of Geography
University of Oregon
Eugene, Oregon 97403

VITA INFORMATION Born in Santa Ana, CA July 28, 1924. Graduated Univ. Cal., Berkeley with BA in Wildlife Conservation and Management in 1950, MA in Zoology in 1953, Ph.D. in Geography in 1959. Conducted research in United States and Latin America until 1985 when I began studying South Asia and China. Physical/cultural/human and historical Geography have been subjects investigated by me that have culminated in the current sketch of research life.

Member of faculty of the Department of Geography at University of Oregon, Eugene for 30 years of regular teaching and then one-third time teaching for five years. During this time my research discoveries followed the developmental sequence of : 1. Distributions of wild plants as modified by humans. 2. Modifications of plants by people who placed plants and animals in the process of domestication. 3. Utilization of crop plants, like maize, and household animals, like chickens, to demonstrate, by their historical distributions, where and when humans have traveled around the earth's surface. 4. Search for traits associated with these modified plants and animals that are carried as cultural baggage. 5. Search for evidence of the early human origins in the New World. 6. Devotion to the reduction of discrimination against people who are different from the majority in any particular place in our world society.

It is on the basis of these philosophies and the willingness to be considered eccentric, if that is necessary, that I have worked, since official retirement, to conduct research on plants and animals that have been so modified by humans that if they are found away from their region of origin, their presence indicates that they have to have been carried across continents and even the oceans by subsequent discoverers and collectors. The significant opposition to the ideas that sailors crossed the world's oceans and traveled long before the Northwestern Europeans set off on discovery has been a blessing. This very rejection has frightened off the competition, who might have gone to Asia searching for data that subsequently I was able to find and now work into my book on the subject. This kind of a search is a bit scary. When few cookbooks are available to tell you what to look for, one does have to let one's mind predict what ought to be in the field situation and then go find the answers when one encounters the evidence. That data will seldom be found without field search in regions about which you cannot be expert and in areas with different customs, and languages that provide culture shock when first entering that region. Thanks to the group of innovative cooperators and bibliographers a certain degree of success has been obtained by the group.

As Prof. Herbert Mason used to say, "When your observations do not match your hypotheses, take heart; you are about to learn something new." In the China experience we move away from the certitude of sculptured stone images of corn ears, sunflowers and annonas from ancient India. We move into slightly less satisfying kinds of data. Artifacts in linguistics and in archaeology, that some Chinese scholars who, even though they did not directly know about the actualities of the archaeological discoveries, call the dates and the very findings into question. Forensic science techniques can take over, since we are dealing with tombs, and I presume the answers will allow logical decisions to be made. Dating of a piece of organic tissue with C14 or the thermoluminescence dating of fired clay or the DNA sequencing of genetic material of seeds such as sunflowers, chili peppers, moschata pumpkin, pineapple, guavas, jicama or yam bean, etc. take me into unknown realms. The scientific experiences are new to me and the need to temporize is frustrating, but essential for the development of a solid base for changing the paradigms in the belief systems of the Social Sciences.

Worse, however, is that these needs begin to require more funding than mine; so I go on this WWW to search for funding to get the job completed the way it should be done with the possible assistance from anyone reading the Web. People who would like to assist in the aim of educating people to accept people for who and what they are regardless of color, size, religion, sex, orientation, etc. can do so by contributing a tax deductible gift to the Oregon Foundation, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403, for research by me. That will be much appreciated by me.

The evidence of maize in archaeological sites in China and its depiction in Hoysala Temples in India, both dated before the 15th century A.D., suggests that this domesticated crop was diffused by human action before the arrival of Columbus in the New World. The implications of this evidence are of great magnitude, since the presence of maize in Asia indicates that humans were able to migrate between both hemispheres; more than likely through trans-oceanic means of travel.

Maize in pre-Columbian India is documented in my article with Anne Z. Parker, "Maize Ears Sculptured in 12th and 13th Century A.D. India as Indicators of Pre-Columbian Diffusion," Economic Botany 43 (2), 1989, pp. 164-180.

The following color illustrations of a few of the sculptures discussed in that article show more detail than was possible in the published black and white photographs that accompanied the article. Click on each thumbnail photograph for a full-screen blowup.

PHOTO #1

PHOTO #2

PHOTO #3

These sculptures are built into temples as load bearing walls with mortise and tenon joints at top and bottom of each sculpted block. They bear the load of stone beams and stone roofs on top. Temples are dated in written historical records in South India. They contain who built the structures, when they were built, the cause for which they were built, and who the sculptors were. Archaeological discoveries in the last decade have similar carvings of maize, etc., and indicate that the sculptural work was typical of sculptures of the reigning Hoysala Dynasty of the 11th to 13th C.E. centuries. Direct observations in the temples show that no two maize ears are identical. Each of the more than 100 temples has similar carvings. Over 80 large ears are present in the last and most beautiful Somnathpur temple with several hundred examples of smaller ears elsewhere, in the roof for example, and these corn ears demonstrate that the designers appreciated the multi-seeded fertility symbol, just as they carved the images of the Annonas and sunflowers, which are multi-seeded fruits decorating the walls and courtyards.

Maize breeders in India, China, United States, and Great Britain, who have seen extensive collections of the illustrations, concur with me that only sculptors with abundant ears of maize as models could have created these illustrations of maize. No other biological product has these assemblages of anatomical charateristics that are within the envelope of variations of maize. I grant that these findings have been thought to be impossible in the earlier belief systems that maintained that there was no significant contact between New and Old World. These anti-diffusionist beliefs have to give way to reality. Archaeological findings will soon be found to verify these predictions, which is also a facet of the Scientific Method.

We are currently finding much more evidence of contact between Asia and the Americas. Many of these relate to DNA complexity of biotic forms that can be tested for indications of genetic similarities and genetic distances, but written literature, paintings, sculptures, and archaeological finds all support not detract from the diffusion hypothesis of very ancient sailing contact in the building of high civilizations around the world.

Additional reference: Carl L. Johannessen, "Distribution of Pre-Columbian Maize and Modern Maize Names," in Shue Tuck Wong, ed., Person, Place and Thing: Interpretative and Empirical Essays in Cultural Geography , Geoscience and Man vol. 31, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 1992, pp. 313-331.