Tracking the Ancestry of Corn Back 9,000 Years

Posted by Jimalakirti in Evolution
at 8:50 am on Tuesday, 25 May 2010

It is now growing season across the Corn Belt of the United States. Seeds that have just been sown will, with the right mixture of sunshine and rain, be knee-high plants by the Fourth of July and tall stalks with ears ripe for picking by late August.

Corn is much more than great summer picnic food, however. Civilization owes much to this plant, and to the early people who first cultivated it.

(New York Times, May 25, 2010)

Read the rest of this entry here.

Comments (2)

Comments(2)

    Comment by Jo at 8:48 pm on 7 June 2010 at

    Fascinating article. Maize isn’t always beneficial though, it depends on the habitat where it’s being planted. The grains spread to Asia,including to Nepal, where they formerly cultivated high altitude barley, a nutritious crop but with grains lower in sugar than maize grains. Crops in mountainous Nepal are often grown on terraced hillsides, not an appropriate way to grow maize because the plant has very shallow roots. Monsoon rains coming down hard on the terraces erode the soil around the plants and thus erode the terraces, washing topsoil down hill. I saw this kind of erosion myself in Nepal. Maize has a slightly insidious attractant in that it’s higher in sugar content than harder grains. Once people figure they can grow and eat it, they do. Maize is also not nearly as nutritious as other kinds of grains, being higher in sugar and starch but lower in protein and various other elements of value. Ag research for Nepal hill farming began around the end of the 90s (I first went there in the mid-70s), and improved varieties of maize were available, but its use depended on many factors. One study found that improved varieties of maize were planted by less than 60% of hill farmers in the sample.

    Here are a few facts about maize as human food.
    Maize is deficient in two essential amino acids: lysine and tryptophan, making it a poor protein food.
    The nutritional disease pellagra, which is caused by a deficiency in niacin, is associated with maize-based diets in the Americas and Africa (and also was in Nepal). Pellagra occurs in cultures that depend on corn as a dietary staple, because the niacin in corn is difficult to digest and is often removed during processing.
    Of the three major cereal grains (wheat, maize, and rice), maize has the lowest concentration of protein, calcium, and niacin.
    [See: http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Ca-De/Corn-or-Maize-Based-Diets.html

    We know that limitations of maize in many cultural diets as in Central and South america or in Asia are supplemented with legumes, which supply a lot of the nutrition that maize lacks: different beans in Mexico, for example, lentils of various kinds in Nepal.
    I don’t know if villagers in Central or South America planted maize on hill terraces, but if they did, they must have figured out how to keep it from eroding the terraces. Perhaps the climates were drier than the monsoon climates of South and SE Asia.
    An intriguing plant indeed.

    Comment by Kitchen Rugs  at 3:53 am on 13 October 2010 at

    protein foods are needed badly during times of sickness and if you are working out heavily,,*