Jul 9, 2010

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The origins of maize

Maize people

Long ago, in pre-human times, two brothers cleared a patch of virgin forest and made the first field in the wilderness, which provided the creator gods with the material from which they created mankind: maize. This is how Maya mythology explains the origin of maize and so also of mankind. Naturalists and archaeologists are, in their own way, tracing the origins of maize, which continues to pose a few riddles to this day.

Maize was given its botanical name by Carl von Linné in the eighteenth century: Zea mays. Zea is derived from an Ancient Greek word for spelt; mays is the Indian – or rather Haitian – name for maize, and means “Preserver of Life”.

Teosinte grass in the show garden of the May-Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne. At the top is the female infructescence, the precursor of today’s maize cobs; the male flower is shown underneath.

Teosinte and maize – Related and yet so different
Maize differs considerably from its wild form teosinte in terms of its external appearance, and yet in terms of genetic structure there are no more differences between them than between two different varieties of maize. The two can also be crossed with one another quite easily. Gene regulation holds the key: Regulatory genes are responsible for ensuring that specific genes are “switched on”. Modifications to these “über-genes” have provided us with an explanation as to why teosinte and maize look so different when genetically they are so similar. It seems likely that the “explosion” in cob size can be explained by random mutations of a regulatory gene.

Yum Kaax, the maize god of the Maya

It is now widely accepted that Mexico is the birthplace of maize. It is descended from the wild grass, teosinte - Zea parviglumis -, which is still found in Mexico today.

Teosinte, however, looks completely different from the cultivated maize we are familiar with. The grass has male inflorescences on the jutting-out side shoots, which over time have developed into the cob-like seed heads of the maize plant.

Exactly how teosinte became maize is currently the subject of intense research, including research using molecular-genetic techniques. We now know that all lineages of maize - and in this respect it differs from other cultivated plants – can be traced back to a single primitive form, Zea parviglumis, and that maize became distinct from teosinte grass about 9,200 years ago. The oldest fossilized remains of maize are considerably younger, about 6,250 years old.

One astonishing aspect in the history of the development of maize is that cob sizes have positively exploded within just a few thousand years. The oldest recorded cobs were no bigger than two centimetres, but around 5,000 years ago they had already grown to seven centimetres. Over the next 3,000 years the cobs would grow to more than fifty times the size of the earliest finds.

The Indians intuitively used a few chance mutations of teosinte wild grass to develop edible maize. Today the genes responsible for this are known.

Essentially there are only five characteristics that differentiate our present cultured maize from the wild teosinte grass. Maize cultures today only have one stem in the middle, the ears have become cobs with many rows of ordered corns, the cobs are break-proof, and the corns are no longer surrounded by a hard wood-like husk and remain tightly attached to the cob.

The sacred maize plant

Santo grasia nal – sacred and merciful maize – as maize is still referred to in its homeland today. Since maize has sustained the peoples of Central and South America for thousands of years, it is regarded as a gift from the gods.

The religious worldview of the Indian people is based on an understanding of the close association and interdependence that exists between the people and maize as a gift from the gods. The people cannot live without the support of the gods, and in turn the gods rely on the sacrifice and gifts of the people.

Cultivated maize is unable to propagate itself; it needs man’s help to sow and nurture it. In return maize provided an abundance of food, so that time was left over for culture, science and politics. So maize was instrumental in the development of thriving advanced civilisations such as the Aztecs and Maya in Mexico and the Incas in Peru.

The Maya call themselves “maize people”, because in their creation story the gods made man out of maize: “from yellow and white maize they made his flesh and from maize porridge they made his arms and legs”.

First they tried clay, but it got wet and turned back into clay, then they tried wood, but it lacked genius and wisdom. Only on the third attempt was man created from maize and the creation process was complete. The different colours of maize correspond to different skin colours.

The Maya admitted the maize, “Bringer of Abundance”, into their pantheon and even today the maize god sits at the edge of the “milpa” or maize field, even though the figure and names have been changed by the influence of Christianity.

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