[I read that gourds are likely the first plant crop domesticated by humans, and spread across the globe with humans similarly to dogs. How essential were they to prehistoric people and what were some of their uses? : AskAnthropology](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskAnthropology/comments/oesoy5/i_read_that_gourds_are_likely_the_first_plant/): * "The gourd was one of the world's first cultivated plants grown not primarily for food, but for use as containers." It sounds like it's saying the gourd was one of the world's first cultivated plants, and that it was not grown for food, like those are two separate statements. But I think it is supposed to mean that the gourd was one of the world first "cultivated plants grown not primarily for food". * So other plants may have been cultivated first, but they were all used for food, unlike the gourd: gourds are also for musical instruments. Both for percussion and resonating chamber for harped instruments. Similar to the body of a guitar. * In all likelihood, bottle gourds probably had many uses. Immature gourds are technically edible. Additionally, dried gourds could be rattles used in entertainment and ritual purposes for example. In many parts of West Africa, the gourds were historically decorated and used in divination rituals or containers for ritual substances and its no stretch to suppose they had similar functions in other places and times. More practical uses would be bottles for liquids (water, beer, milk, etc…) or as containers and tools like bowls or ladles. For early hunter gatherers though, the most vital and attractive feature probably was for storing water. Consider how wide-spread and populous humanity became after the end of the Pleistocene coinciding with the hypothetical domestication of the bottle gourd. That kind of distribution and adaptation could only have been possible in many parts of the world if humans had a way to store and transport potable water in areas where such water was scarce. Though biologically humans can live a few days without water, that doesn’t consider how rapidly our capabilities decline once we begin to dehydrate. Without the ability to transport water, even a day’s walk over an arid terrain could be a limiting factor in humans’ successful dispersal over an area or adaptation to that area. - Bottle gourd (Lagenaria siceraria) was one of the first domesticated plants, and the only one with a global distribution during pre-Columbian times. Although native to Africa, bottle gourd was in use by humans in east Asia, possibly as early as 11,000 y ago (BP) and in the Americas by 10,000 BP. https://www.pnas.org/content/111/8/2937