Maize - Corn

MAIZE WAS

“NOT DOMESTICATED, BUT CREATED”

Alfonso Puga

December 14, 2015

HISU 360

Brandman University

Modesto, California

ABSTRACT

Maize is truly man's first, and maybe his most noteworthy accomplishment of genetic engineering. To such a point, that it is even said to be a gift from the gods. Human advancement owes much to this plant. Initially cultivated by the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica. The most amazing part of the historical backdrop of maize is that it demonstrated the capacities of agriculturalists 10,000 years ago. These first people could change an inedible grass, undesirable elements into a high-yielding, effectively harvested food crop. Corn only exists in its common form because of the advanced ingenuity and knowledge of this plant by the ancient Mesoamericans.

Maize Was "Not Domesticated, But Created."

In a 1982 exposition, the Mexican National Museum of Culture claimed that maize was "not domesticated, but created." Admittedly, maize is accepted as Man's first, and perhaps his greatest feat of genetic engineering. So much so, that it is even said to be a gift from the gods. Great civilizations need a great asset. Ancient Egypt had the Nile. The Mayans had maize corn as others call it. As Man's first achievement of cultivation, it remains a largely mysterious crop. Despite decades of studies, there is no known wild ancestor; maize does not have a method to generate itself, and thus to survive as a species, it relies on man. Admittedly, the ancient people and definitely the Pre-Columbian New World entered into a powerful bond with maize, the grain that fed them, today continues to provide our world needs.

The name Maize, or Maiz as recognized throughout the Spanish-speaking world, comes from mahis, a word belonging to the Taino people of Cuba, and through whom the Europeans had their first contact with the grain. In Maya, corncobs are called naal, and the grain, x-im or xiim. The great civilizations of Mesoamerica, the Maya, Aztec, Toltec, Zapotec, Mixtec, and Olmec, could not have existed without the maize. Maize was essential in their diet and their most revered crop. Native to the New World, being domesticated in Mesoamerica by 3,500 BC, and then it spread throughout the American continents. Maize, also known as corn and Indian corn, is any of the diverse primitive forms of the grass of the species Zea-mays.

Corn as staple and symbol played a significant role in all aspects of Maya life. Maize appearances in everything from religion to mythologies. Plainly put, they lived by and for corn. Having a higher yield than wheat, rice, sorghum, barley, rye or any other New World grain, corn not only fed the magnitudes that cultivated it, it fed the non-laboring elite; the nobility, priests, warrior, scribes, and the public officials who administrated the empire. Yale archeologist Michael D. Coe has labeled maize the key to the understanding of Mesoamerican civilization: "Where it flourished, so did the high culture." The Maya considered corn a gift from the gods and cultivating it was a sacred duty. Maize, highly valued than jade, the most sacred of stones, was used to symbolize it. According to the Popol Vuh, the sacred writing of the Maya, humanity was formed out of corn.

According to the books of Chilam Balam, In the beginning, corn was initially hidden under a rock, and only the ants could reach the grains to eat them. However, after learning of the grain's existence from foxes, rats, and other animals, man asked for the gods' help and, after various attempts, the gods were able to remove the food from under a rock and made it available to all humanity. Also, the Popol Vuh recounts that from a mixture of white and yellow grains formed the human race. Anthropologists proclaimed that the god was Yum K'aax, which means "Maiz God," who portrayed as a vigorous youth with long, silky strands.  

Recent genetic data suggests that maize domestication happened 9,000 years ago. There are several theories about the precise origin of maize in Mesoamerica. As a direct domestication of a Mexican annual teosinte grass, Zea-mays, the open wild grass that has five species propagating in Mexico, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. The teosinte variety that is closest to maize is Balsas teosinte, which is native to Mexico's Central Balsas River Valley in the State of Guerrero in Southern Mexico. Along with neighboring Chiapas and Guerrero, it is the most diverse area, ecologically speaking, in Mesoamerica. The area's inhabitant geography is equally diverse: it is the home of 16 Indian groups, almost all of whom have lived there for millennia.

As the peoples of southern Mexico are credited to have created modern maize - a feat so improbable and challenging that archeologists and biologists continue to debate over the achievement. Furthermore, maize became the center of an innovative agricultural system called the Milpa. It is at around 1,500BC that the first evidence of large-scale land clearing for Milpas appears, and with it appeared the Olmecs. Farmers planted a dozen crops together, including maize, avocados, melon, tomatoes, sweet potato, and varieties of squash and beans. Some of these plants lack nutrients that others have in abundance, resulting in a potent, productive interaction between all plants grown in the milpa. Some, therefore, see the milpa as one of the most successful human inventions, alongside maize.

There are places in Mesoamerica that been cultivation for the past 4000 years and are still productive. The milpa is the only practice that allows that kind of long-term use. According to Hugo Perales, an agronomist at the thinktank Ecosur, in Chiapas; amongst the Tzotzil Indians of San Juan Chamula, a mountain town in central Chiapas, 85 percent of the indigenes campesino planted the same maize type as their fathers, varieties that have been carried on and preserved for generations.

Researchers centered on excavating the Xihuatoxtla Shelter in an area of the Balsas Valley in southwestern Mexico. According to a National Science Foundation. The Xihuatoxtla archeological site presented evidence of maize and squash dating back 8,700 years, representing the earliest remains of maize yet discovered. In addition to more conventional archeological remains, scientists are using new microbotanical methods to find domesticated maize from its wild grain as well as to identify early sites of maize agriculture. The new analysis suggests that corn may have been domesticated in Mexico as early as 10,000 years ago. Dr. John Jones and his colleagues, Mary Pohl, and Kevin Pope have evaluated various lines of data, including paleobotanical bodies such as pollen, phytoliths, and starch grains, as well as genetic analysis, to reconstruct the history of maize cultivation of the ancient Mesoamericans.