Cotton (New World)

New World cotton (Gossypium hirsutum and G. barbadense) represents convergent evolution in both plant and human behavior. While Old World farmers domesticated African cotton species in the Indus Valley, isolated American populations independently domesticated entirely different cotton species on the opposite side of the planet—proving that the cotton-human mutualism was inevitable wherever suitable plants and textile-using cultures coincided.

The adjacent possible for New World cotton required a specific combination: wild cotton species with spinnable fibers, established weaving traditions capable of exploiting them, and agricultural societies worth supplying. Coastal Peru provided all three by 5800 BCE. Wild cotton grew along Pacific valleys; fishing communities had developed netting skills transferable to textile production; and emerging complex societies created demand for status-marking cloth.

The Peruvian cotton domestication followed a distinctive path. Coastal populations first cultivated cotton for fishing net cord, not clothing—nets being more valuable than garments in marine economies. Only later did cotton production shift toward textiles as inland populations demanded fabric. The sequence reveals that the same plant can enter different adjacent possibles depending on what humans need: fiber for nets or fiber for cloth.

New World cotton species proved superior to Old World varieties in fiber length and strength. When Europeans arrived, they found American cotton textiles equal or superior to anything from India or Egypt. This genetic heritage eventually transformed global production: today's commercial cotton (G. hirsutum, 'Upland cotton') descends from Mexican domestication, not African or Asian varieties.

The quipu—the Andean knotted-string recording system—depended on cotton's specific properties: consistent fiber thickness for readable knots, durability for multi-year records, and sufficient production for the thousands of strings complex accounts required. Cotton was infrastructure for Inca administration as much as clothing for its people.