Page 14 - ARUBA TODAY

A14 LOCAL
Tuesday 17 March 2020

Maish grandi; Big corn or Zea mays Episode LX - (60)

ORANJESTAD — Corn as we know it today would not exist if it weren’t for
the Amerindian botanists or expert agro engineers that cultivated and
developed many crops including corn. It is a human creation, a plant
that does not exist naturally in the wild and will not survive without human
attention, it can only survive if planted and protected by humans.

2-There are many different types of corn

1-Corn is an Amerindian heritage

The greatest surprise, and the source of much past controversy in corn archeol-
ogy, was the identification of the corn’s ancestor. Many botanists did not see
any connection between corn and other living plants. Some concluded that
the crop plant arose through the domestication by early agriculturalists of wild
corn that was now extinct, or at least undiscovered.

About 10,000 years ago, Mesoamerican man found that he could make hy-
brids with a conical grass, made up of various grains, and that was born in the
wild: teosinte (which in Nahuatl means grain of God). Since then, he began to
grow this seed, choosing the best grains and generating hybrids, so corn was
born.

The oldest vestiges of domesticated corn were found in Mexico and are 8,700
B.C.

The teosinte currently continues to live in Mexico wild along streams and slopes.
There are many types; maize is believed to come from the Zea. mays ssp type.
Parviglumis that grows in the southwest of the country and is the most similar, in
genetic structure, to corn.

The most impressive aspect of the maize story is what it tells us about the ca-
pabilities of agriculturalists 9,000 years ago. These people were living in small
groups and shifting their settlements seasonally. Yet they were able to trans-
form a grass with many inconvenient, unwanted features into a high-yielding,
easily harvested food crop. The domestication process must have occurred in
many stages over a considerable length of time as many different, indepen-
dent characteristics of the plant were modified.

From Mexico maize spread north into the Southwestern United States and
south down the coast to Peru and Argentina. About 1000 years ago, as Native
American people migrated north to the eastern woodlands of present day
North America, they brought corn with them.
3- “Maishi” Abstract Art
Continued on Page 14