Fall has arrived and with it, pumpkins! Covering stoops across the US, pumpkins are a part of the aesthetics of fall as well as the menu. While we already shared the ancient origins of pumpkin pie spice, we want to dive into the ancient Indigenous origins of pumpkin pie too! 

Pumpkins are intimately tied to the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Domesticated as far back as 10,000 BC/BCE, squash was a cornerstone of the diet of Central American peoples. Cucurbita pepo pumpkins were the earliest to domesticated squash and include a variety of summer squash, winter squash, and gourds. Indeed, if it weren’t for domestication, it’s likely that they would have gone extinct, according to new research. Before human domestication, the bitter squash depended on megafauna like ground sloths and mastodons to eat and then disperse the seeds. With the extinction of megafauna in the Americas, it’s likely that pumpkins would have died out too (and many varieties did). But thanks to Stone Age peoples, some pumpkins were rescued from the brink.