CORN IS MEXICO'S GIFT TO THE WORLD

By Juan Montoya

BROWNSVILLE – In Homer’s The Odyssey, there is a chapter where as Ulysses is trying to make his way back to Ithaca, he lands on an island in the Aegean Sea. As he walks toward a local village, he comes upon women grinding corn and men tending cattle.

Also, on a book written about Sumerian civilization in Mesopotamia, the writer WH.W.F Saggs notes that the Assyrian army provided its horses with corn, and further notes that threshing of corn was performed by dragging an instrument over the ears.

What makes these two examples noteworthy is that corn never existed in the times of Homer, or of the Assyrians, for that matter.

“That is a misconception that has been overlooked by countless English teachers,” said Dr. Tony Zavaleta, and anthropologist with the University of Texas-Brownsville. “I don’t know how many generations have gone through English class and heard the same mistake.”

And although linguists say that the word “corn” is a generic German word for grain or millet, the fact remains that the origin of corn – or maize –was in México.

A wild grass, Teosinte (Zea Mexicana) is the ancestor of all known species. Teosinte grows wild in remote areas of Mexico and Guatemala. The oldest known remains of corn were discovered in México’s Valley of Tehuacan, and dated at 7,000 years old.

The earliest corn cob found was from 5,000 B.C. and was unmistakable. The cob was enclosed in a husk-like casing. This husk means the corn was dependent upon man to open and disperse the kernels and to dust the pollen.

In other words, it had to be domesticated by man so its fruit would improve into the plant that we know today.

Piperno DR, And Flannery KV, writing for the Smithsonian Institute's Tropical Research team in Panama, say that accelerator mass spectrometry age determinations of maize cobs (Zea mays L.) from Guilá Naquitz Cave in Oaxaca, Mexico, produced dates of 5,400 carbon-14 years before the present (about 6,250 calendar years ago), making those cobs the oldest in the Americas. Macrofossils and phytoliths characteristic of wild and domesticated Zea fruits are absent from older strata from the site, although Zea pollen has previously been identified from those levels. These results, together with the modern geographical distribution of wild Zea mays, suggest that the cultural practices that led to Zea domestication probably occurred elsewhere in Mexico. Guilá Naquitz Cave has now yielded the earliest macrofossil evidence for the domestication of two major American crop plants, squash (Cucurbita pepo) and maize.

Corn spread from its center of origin, México, north to the U.S., and south to Central and South America. Almost 300 diverse forms of corn have been described from these regions. Corn has proven to be one of the most climatically adaptable members of the grass family.

The ancestral source of sweet corn is an Andean corn, Chullpi. In prehistoric times, Chullpi was not boiled or roasted but dried and eaten as sweet snacks.

Also, the high sugar content made a higher alcoholic content drink, popular in Bolivia and drunk with the Chullpi snacks. In northern Peru, a well-preserved ear of this type was dated at between 1,000 to 1,534 A.D. In the United States, sweet corn remains have been found in New Mexico and northern Arizona caves and date from 1,200 to 1,300 A.D.

The Native American Indians grew maize, which is the broad category of all corn types. Native Americans were probably the first breeders of corn selecting the best plants and saving seed from season to season. By the time Columbus discovered America there were hundreds of forms or types of maize (corn).

Columbus is attributed with bringing maize back to Spain on his return voyage in 1493. Its cultivation spread quickly following the trade routes of Portuguese in the early 1500’s. One account has maize reaching the Philippine Isles from the west before Magellan arrived from the east in 1521.

The Native Americans had been cultivating flint (or field) corn, sharing many different kinds with the colonists. Corn has a long history of being used for more than just animal feed or food for humans. The British Parliament tried to encourage American colonists to turn corn into sugar with the Molasses Act in 1733.

Today, over one third of the sweeteners consumed by Americans comes from corn or another feed grain. Corn has also been used in the production of alcohol for many years. There is evidence Native Americans used corn to brew beer before Europeans arrived in the Americas. The 1792 Whiskey Rebellion in the United States came about when efforts were made to tax corn whiskey.

At the time, it was not easy to move large quantities of corn so western farmers converted the corn into corn whiskey, which was much easier to transport to customers.

Long before the automobile became the common for of transportation in the United States, corn was being converted into ethyl alcohol, or ethanol. Many of the earliest engine prototypes were designed to run on ethanol. Ethanol is a growing market for corn.

In 2001, 7 percent of the corn produced in the United States was converted into ethanol.

Corn has become the largest crop in the United States, both in terms of acres planted and the value of the crop produced. The top 3 corn producing states are Iowa, Illinois and Nebraska. Together, the top 3 states produce almost 50 percent of the corn in the United States.

Corn is the most widely distributed crop in the world. Corn can grow at altitudes as high as 12,000 feet in the South American Andes Mountains and as low as sea level. It can also grow in tropical climates that receive up to 400 inches of rainfall a year or in areas that receive only 12 inches.

Either way we look at it, in the cultural exchange that took place more than 500 years ago when Columbus stumbled on the New World, the world got a better deal than did the natives who greeted the lost Europeans.