Maize, the Staple Crop of the Americas
Maize, or what we tend to call "corn,"
was first domesticated in Mesoamerica several thousand years ago. It became
the main food crop of many cultures from eastern North America to Chile
in South America. So central was maize-growing in the Americas that the
Mayas, for example, regarded themselves as having been created by the gods
out of maize. Maize was highly adaptable, and selective breeding over centuries
created subspecies able to flourish in such diverse climates as New England,
the arid South West of the U.S., the wet tropical lowlands of Mexico and
Guatemala, and mountain plateaus 9,000 feet high in the central Andes of
South America.
Maize has many advantages over wheat or barley. Seed-bed
preparation can be accomplished with a digging stick. Harvest is easier
and the standing crop is less easily spoiled by moisture or wind. Most importantly,
the return on seeds planted was as high as 45 to 1 at a very early date.
In contrast, early wheat farmers may have realized only a 6-1 return on
seeds planted. However, it took much longer for people in the Americas to
begin to rely upon maize as a domesticated food supply (see timing.)
Maize has excellent nutritional value and, eaten together
with squash and beans, the other staples of early American agriculture,
provides all the amino acids necessary for human life.
In the Americas, we often hear people talk about a combination
of foods: corn, beans and squash. It is interesting to note that people
in the Americas knew a great deal about the 
nutritional intake from these various foods. Beans, for example,
provide needed protein that corn does not. They also knew ways to cook corn
that would enhance it's nutritional values. Cooking corn with burnt ash
for example improves the nurishing potential of the corn. The Hopi woman
making something known as Piki bread first combined corn meal with ash and
water. She then cooks a thin layer of this mixture to make a traditional
Hopi bread with the consistency of paper.
Maize Agricultural Development in the New World
How Corn Was Grown Prehistorically
RETURN....