Domestication of Maize in Mesoamerica

Domestication of Maize in Mesoamerica unriv on the wholeed of the most(prenominal) basic needs of a homosexual universe is that of nourishment. We most release and drink to survive. Subsistence is a natural thought which consumes either modern humans day. What im case I eat for breakfast? What will I take for lunch or will I eat out? Should I take something out for dinner or scatter something up on the way home? All of these questions seem at times quite a complicated, however are without a doubt, much simpler than what may submit crossed the minds of prehistoric humans. Just as it is today subsistence was the bosom of each cultures world. Whether you were nomadic or sedentary each group of guideer-ga in that locationrs had to eat. It is the extract of these societies which eitherows us as archaeologists a peak into the past. The wreak of gathering plenty nutriment in which to obtain a sufficient criterion of calories was outgrowth and foremost in everyday dem eanor. The process of domestication of certain poses in conclusion led to more(prenominal) nucleated settlements. Let us keep in mind Morgans theory of culture, if this is correct, that cultural progression is lineal than it is safe to evolve that the only natural progression for prehistoric humans was to transition from the hunter gather stage of obtaining subsistence to a more boorish life style. One cultigen in particular was maize, straight referred to as corn whisky. In this paper an hear will made to properly explain what maize is, how maize became a major secure in prehistoric peoples diet, and lastly how has maize been discover in Mesoamerica through enjoin in the archeological record.What is maize? It is a large species of American grass of the genus Zea (Z. Mays) widely well-bred as a forage and food plant known as Indian corn (http//archaeology.about.com). Maize is a cultigen this is a crop that cannot propagate in the wild without human intervention. Plant do mestication can be defined as the human creation of a new form of plant, underage on human intervention, harvesting and planting for survival. Maize has a distinct planting season, growing season, and harvesting season.thither is a worldwide splendour placed on corn. In the Western Hemisphere it is by far-off the most valuable human food crop (Beadle, 615). It is still the most important crop in all of Latin America. On a worldwide basis it is the third most important human food crop, with an annual takings of some two hundred metric tons (Beadle, 615).When Columbus arrived from the Old World and stumbled upon this strange crop on the island of Cuba, basically all major races of maize-some two to three hundred- were already in purification and had been disseminated from its place of origin, probably southern Mexico (which will be explained further in the paper), to mid-Chile in the south and to the mouth of the St. Lawrence River in the north. The passage below from a scie nce magazine will further help explain the explanation of maize.Corn, also known as maize (from the Spanish maiz) was first domesticated n advance(prenominal) 10,000 years ago from teosinte, a wild grass that looked quite different from our modern crop. Teosinte grew in Mexico and Central America as a bushy plant with many spikes, the precursor to our familiar ear of corn. The weeny teosinte spikes had only two rows of nearly inedible kernels, or seeds, each wrap by a hard covering. These seeds separated individually at maturity and were dispersed widely. In probably less than a thousand years, the picayune spikes of ancestral teosinte transformed into larger ears with edible kernels that re chief(prenominal)ed on the cob for lightheaded harvest. How these dramatic changes occurred has been a puzzle for over a century. Geneticists are now convinced that humans living in the Balsas River region of Mexico were foraging teosinte seeds when they detect rare aberrations-likely ca e mploy by random mutations-that increased spike size dramatically. Seeds were propagated from these big spikes, and thus the remarkable steadyts of domestication began. By studying the maize genome, lookers scram now confirmed that mutations in single genes, such as Teosinte glume architectural (Tgal). Alter kernel and plant structure and that changes in many genes captivate complex developmental traits, such as the time to f debaseing. As human communitys migrated throughout the Americas, new varieties of maize were selected to grow in local environments. almost varieties were maintained as so-called landraces, each growing in bionomic niches in Mexico and South America. Now, these varieties and landraces hold a wealth of genetic diversity, which is creation tapped for both basic seek and as traits for crop breeding(http//www.sciencemag.org/products/posters/maize_poster)How did maize induce a major staple in prehistoric peoples diet? Where there another(prenominal) uses o r maize other than subsistence? New research shows that there is unequivocally four major independent centers of plant domestication the salutary East, China, Eastern North America and Mesoamerica. (Smith 1989 1566) The Americas is believed to provide the clearest record there is of land origins anywhere in the world, providing new understanding of the process involved in this key transformation in human history. However, the process is believed to permit started in Mesoamerica.Maize has many uses food, feed for live stock and energy for industries. As a food, the whole grain, either mature or immature, may be employ or the maize may be processed by dry out move techniques to give a comparatively large tally of intermediary products, such as maize grits of different tinge size, maize meal, maize flour and flaking grits. (http//fao.org) These materials have a significant fall of applications in a large variety of foods. Maize grown in subsistence land continues to be use as a basic food crop. In developed countries more than 60 percent of the production is utilise in compounded feeds for poultry, pigs and ruminant animals. In recent years, even in developing countries in which maize is a staple food, more of it has been utilise as an animal feed ingredient. High moisture maize has been nonrecreational much attention recently as an animal feed because of its lower cost and its capacity to improve efficiency in feed conversion. The by-products of dry milling include the germ and the seed-coat. The former is used as a source of edible oil of extravagantly quality. The seed-coat or pericarp is used mainly as a feed, although in recent years invade has developed in it as a source of dietary part (Earl et al., 1988 Burge and Duensing, 1989). Wet milling is a process applicable mainly in the industrial use of maize, although the alkaline cooking process used in manu pointuring tortillas (the thin, flat bread of Mexico and other Central American countri es) is also a wet milling operation that removes only the pericarp (Bressani, 1972). Wet milling yields maize starch and by-products such as maize gluten, used as a feed ingredient.It is this flat bread or tortilla that is speculated to have been used in pre-historic times. This is not the tortilla that we think of today, however, the basic concept is rudimentary and could have been used even 10,000 years ago. George W. Beadles research shows that the probability of maize beingness similarly used as what we refer to as popcorn is high. This high probability points to the use of teosinte, which has been argued among scholars as an un-usable product, therefore not an ancestor of maize. Beadles research has proven that even the triangular kernel of teosinte could have been heated on heated sand, hot rock or fire and would have popped.There is speculation that in prehistoric time, maize had a religious and ceremonial purpose. It is written that in the height of the Incan empire maize was used in ritual and ceremonial gatherings in the form of beer. (Fernandez-Arnesto 243) There isnt anything to request any different anywhere else that maize has turned up within the archaeologic record. With a better understanding of maize and its possible functions, lets shell out where maize originated.Blake, Clark, Chisholm, and Mudar consider the transition to agriculture in the pliant stop of edgeal Mesoamerica (from approximately 1500 B.C. to the birth of Christ), specifically a spacious the Pacific coast of Chiapas, Mexico. These scholars review the consequence from this area in terms of two competing hypotheses the agonistic feasting model of Hayden (1990) and the interaction of plants and humans as described by Rindos (1984) and Flannery (1986).MacNeishs work in the Tehuacan Valley has shown that the origins of maize and its integration into a strategy of agricultural production that included a variety of plants began as early as 7000 B.C. The earliest people to use and domesticate these plants were not sedentary, instead, they were nomadic foragers who incorporated these domesticates into a complex seasonal posture of hunting and assemblage (MacNeish 1967, 1972 Flannery 1968 Flannery 1986). It has been believed that from Formative times forward that maize is typically seen as the main staple crop in Mesoamerican prehistory. Agricultural advancement has long been thought of as the cornerst matchless of early sedentary village life and one of necessary conditions for the development of complex society (MacNeish 1972). Maize yields a high amount of caloric intake which is necessary in the process of sustaining the level of activity that prehistoric people in Mesoamerica needed to survive.A recent re-analysis by Farnsworth et al (1985) of archaeological data from the Tehuacan Valley, including a unchanging carbon and nitrogen analysis of the human skeletal remains, suggests that a knockout dependence on grains, including maize began as ea rly as the Coxcatlan phase (ca. 5000-3000 B.C.). In Oaxaca, excavated macrobotanical remains show that domesticates, including maize, beans, squash, and avocados, were in use and consumed both to begin with and after the appearance of the first sedentary villages (Flannery 1976, 1986). Kirkbys (1973) study of agricultural production suggests that the main staple, maize, was cultivated and relied upon from the Early Formative Tierras Largas phase (1400-1150 B.C.) onwards. She suggests, however, that maize did not reach a threshold of productivity, until about 100B.C. when larger varieties allowed greater yields per cultivated hectares of land. The assumption is that as maize cob size grew, and the plant became more productive, then early villagers came change magnitudely to rely on it as a subsistence staple. Both the Tehuacan and the Oaxaca data suggest that after agricultural products, particularly maize, became important in the subsistence system by the Late Archaic period, the trend towards increasing reliance on these plants continued through time.The movement of a relatively small amount of maize from established agro-ecology over long distances into a new environment is equivalent to an evolutionary bottleneck or a primeer event (King, 1987 Mayr, 1963). Because only a small portion of the population is re put ined after one of these events, sampling error will end in, among other things, changed gene frequencies, breakdown of co-adapted gene complexes, and sometimes increased one-dimensional genetic variability (Cheverud and Routman, 1996). The above mentioned on page 2 and 3 of this paper attempted to explain the process of genetics when involved in the process of advancement of a plant. We can refer to this as agricultural evolution.Farming in modern day seems to be, from an outsider looking in hard work, dirty work, and monotonous work. If with modern equipment farming is difficult what would it have been like in prehistoric Mesoamerica? Why far m at all? We look at hunting game now in present day society as romantic and sportsman like. There is a challenge to the game. There is fancy equipment purchased and well kept. Hunters tell stories that are passed on from generation to generation, hunting stories in prehistory had to be just as exciting and the stuff of which myths were made. So, again wherefore farm at all? Many scholars have argued that without agriculture societies would not have existed. Only agriculture, with its pattern of population growth, urbanization, and economic surpluses has produced civilizations (Reed, 5). Thus helping to explain why agriculture led to complex societies.Varying conditions such as altitude, rainfall, soil, and seasonal temperature rand and latitudinal differences in the length of day during growing seasons led to the eventual distribution of maize northward into North America, however for the sake of this paper the focalisation will remain on Mesoamerica. The research indicates that the evidence in the archaeological record states that the coastal areas show maize before any other area. Coe and Flannery until the 1980s were the only two researchers to report domesticates at Early Formative cities along the Pacific Coast of either Chiapas or Guatemala. Other than these few incidences relatively few sites have produced macrobotanical evidence of cultigens among their subsistence remains.Richard Scotty MacNeish conducts what he called the great corn hunt in 1958. MacNeish believed by tracking pre-ceramic caves in the southern part of Mesoamerica, namely, in the caves of Copan and the Comeagua Valley of Honduras he would have a better see of tracking the corn (MacNeish 1962). His search extended to Zacapa Valley of Guatemala in 1959, as well having brief visits in Oaxaca and the Rio Balsas Valley of Guerrero. In 1961 MacNeish and his team started the Tehuacan purgeion which yielded to be a great unbelievable success. Among many question with this project MacNei sh and his colleagues were able to solve the problem of the origins of corn and were able to attack the how and the why of many other domesticated plants in highland Mesoamerica. According to MacNeish the amount of artifacts (50,000 lithics, more than 100,000 plant remains, over 10,000 bones and some 250 human feces) found in the 454 sites gave the team a time span that roughly stretched from 20,000 to 2000 B.C. Since MacNieshs research and excavations there have been over 1000 sites found and more archaeological evidence to support his original findings.In conclusion, the topic of maize is one that has intrigued and puzzled archaeologists for many years. The domestication and evolution of maize in and of itself causes much debate. It is because of great archaeologists like MacNeish and his unwavering curiosity of the great corn hunt as to why we have the information that we have today. The mere evidence of 454 sites becoming 1000 in a matter of years speaks for itself. The fact rem ains that there are 4 major independent centers of plant domestication, the Near East, China, North America, and Mesoamerica. It is the intent of this paper to have clearly introduced even the novice of persons to what exactly is the definition of maize, how maize became a major staple in prehistoric peoples diet, and how maize has been detected in Mesoamerica through evidence in the archaeological record.