Maize domestication
Domesticación del maíz
- Date
- c. 6700 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Xihuatoxtla Shelter, Balsas River Valley, Guerrero, Mexico
- Credited to
- Archaic gatherer-horticulturalists of the Balsas
- Field
- Life & health
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
The transformation of teosinte, a grass with hard spikelets, into a plant with a cob of naked grains unable to reproduce without humans. The most radical domestication in history and the foundation of American civilisations.
Starches and phytoliths from Xihuatoxtla give c. 6700 BCE; the oldest cobs (Guilá Naquitz) date to c. 4300 BCE, and those of Tehuacán to c. 3500 BCE; the productive cob only becomes established around 2000 BCE.
What it led to
- Late but explosive settlement in Mesoamerica and later across the Americas
- Nixtamalisation and a diet that sustained cities such as Teotihuacan
- Agricultural calendars and maize religion among the Olmec, Maya and Mexica
Built on
- Squash domesticationc. 8000 BCE
- Digging stick
Made possible
- Early arrival of maize and root crops in Panamac. 5800 BCE
- Popcorn (popping maize)c. 4700 BCE
- Common bean domesticationc. 2500 BCE
- Nixtamalization of maizec. 1200 BCE
- Irrigation canals of Kaminaljuyúc. 400 BCE
- Mesoamerican Long Count calendar and Maya zero36 BCE
- Hohokam irrigation canalsc. 700
- Columbian exchange1493-1600
- Mal de la rosa (first description of pellagra)1735 (publ. 1762)
- Incaparina1959
- SR52 single-cross hybrid maize1960
- Milpa
- Metate (grinding stone)
- Mesoamerican calendar