What was the staple crop in Mesoamerica?

EL BATAN, Mexico (CIMMYT) – For Mexicans, the “children of corn,” maize is entwined in life, history and tradition. It is not just a crop; it is central to their identity.

Even today, despite political and economic policies that have led Mexico to import one-third of its maize, maize farming continues to be deeply woven into the traditions and culture of rural communities. Furthermore, maize production and pricing are important to both food security and political stability in Mexico.

One of humanity’s greatest agronomic achievements, maize is the most widely produced crop in the world. According to the head of CIMMYT’s maize germplasm bank, senior scientist Denise Costich, there is broad scientific consensus that maize originated in Mexico, which is home to a rich diversity of varieties that has evolved over thousands of years of domestication.

The miracle of maize’s birth is widely debated in science. However, it is agreed that teosinte (a type of grass) is one of its genetic ancestors. What is unique is that maize’s evolution advanced at the hands of farmers. Ancient Mesoamerican farmers realized this genetic mutation of teosinte resembled food and saved seeds from their best cobs to plant the next crop. Through generations of selective breeding based on the varying preferences of farmers and influenced by different climates and geography, maize evolved into a plant species full of diversity.

The term “maize” is derived from the ancient word mahiz from the Taino language (a now extinct Arawakan language) of the indigenous people of pre-Columbian America. Archeological evidence indicates Mexico’s ancient Mayan, Aztec and Olmec civilizations depended on maize as the basis of their diet and was their most revered crop.

As Popol Vuh, the Mayan creation story, goes, the creator deities made the first humans from white maize hidden inside a mountain under an immovable rock. To access this maize seed, a rain deity split open the rock using a bolt of lightning in the form of an axe. This burned some of the maize, creating the other three grain colors, yellow, black and red. The creator deities took the grain and ground it into dough and used it to produce humankind.

Many Mesoamerican legends revolve around maize, and its image appears in the region’s crafts, murals and hieroglyphs. Mayas even prayed to maize gods to ensure lush crops: the tonsured maize god’s head symbolizes a maize cob, with a small crest of hair representing the tassel. The foliated maize god represents a still young, tender, green maize ear.

Maize was the staple food in ancient Mesoamerica and fed both nobles and commoners. They even developed a way of processing it to improve quality. Nixtamalization is the Nahuatl word for steeping and cooking maize in water to which ash or slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) has been added. Nixtamalized maize is more easily ground and has greater nutritional value, for the process makes vitamin B3 more bioavailable and reduces mycotoxins. Nixtamalization is still used today and CIMMYT is currently promoting it in Africa to combat nutrient deficiency.

White hybrid maize (produced through cross pollination) in Mexico has been bred for making tortillas with good industrial quality and taste. However, many Mexicans consider tortillas made from landraces (native maize varieties) to be the gold standard of quality.

“Many farmers, even those growing hybrid maize for sale, still grow small patches of the local maize landrace for home consumption,” noted CIMMYT Landrace Improvement Coordinator Martha Willcox. “However, as people migrate away from farms, and the number of hectares of landraces decrease, the biodiversity of maize suffers.”

Diversity at the heart of Mexican maize

The high level of maize diversity in Mexico is due to its varied geography and culture. As farmers selected the best maize for their specific environments and uses, maize diverged into distinct races, according to Costich. At present there are 59 unique Mexican landraces recorded.

Ancient maize farmers noticed not all plants were the same. Some grew larger than others, some kernels tasted better or were easier to grind. By saving and sowing seeds from plants with desirable characteristics, they influenced maize evolution. Landraces are also adapted to different environmental conditions such as different soils, temperature, altitude and water conditions.

“Selection for better taste and texture, ease of preparation, specific colors, and ceremonial uses all played a role in the evolution of different landraces,” said Costich. “Maize’s genetic diversity is unique and must be protected in order to ensure the survival of the species and allow for breeding better varieties to face changing environments across the world.”

“Organisms cannot evolve if there is no genetic, heritable variation for natural selection to work with. Likewise, breeders cannot make any progress in selecting the best crop varieties, if there is no diversity for them to work with,” she said.

Willcox agrees maize diversity needs to be protected. “This goes beyond food; reduced diversity takes away a part of civilization’s identity and traditions. Traditional landraces are the backbone of rural farming in Mexico, and a source of tradition in cooking and ceremonies as well as being an economic driver through tourism. They need to be preserved,” she said.

Mexican collection preserves maize diversity

CIMMYT’s precursor, the Office of Special Studies funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, aided in the preservation of Mexican landraces in the 1940s, when it began a maize germplasm collection in a project with the Mexican government. By 1947, the collection contained 2,000 accessions. In a bid to organize them, scientists led by Mario Gutiérrez and Efraim Hernández Xolocotzi drew a chalk outline of Mexico and began to lay down ears of maize based on their collection sites. What emerged was a range of patterns between the races of maize. This breakthrough allowed the team of scientists to codify races of maize for the first time.

Today, CIMMYT’s Maize Germplasm Bank contains over 28,000 unique collections of maize seed and related species from 88 countries.

“These collections represent and safeguard the genetic diversity of unique native varieties and wild relatives and are held in long-term storage,” said Costich. “The collections are studied by CIMMYT and used as a source of diversity to breed for traits such as heat and drought tolerance and resistance to diseases and pests, and to improve grain yield and grain quality.”

CIMMYT’s germplasm is freely shared with scientists and research and development institutions to support maize evolution and ensure food security worldwide.

Willcox said  on-farm breeding by Mexican farmers also continues and preserves maize diversity and the culinary and cultural traditions surrounding maize are the reason there is such a wealth of landraces in existence today.

“The diversity preserved in farmers’ fields is complementary to the CIMMYT germplasm bank collection because these populations represent larger population sizes and diversity than can be contained in a germplasm bank and are subjected to continuous selection under changing climatic conditions,” she added.

It is estimated that, in Mesoamerica, agriculture could have occurred 9,000 or 10,000 years ago, approximately. This area, which covers the southern half of Mexico and part of Central America, has been considered one of the most important centers of plant domestication in the world due to the coexistence of extraordinary plant diversity and a long cultural history (Casas & Caballero, 1995). The most relevant crop within the Mayan culture was and continues to be the maize (You might be interested to read A Place Called Mesoamerica). Its harvest was enough to feed the whole population and also could be cultivated in milpa, the system in which it is combined with other plants such as beans, squash, sweet potatoes, yuca and chili.

During the pre-Hispanic era, its importance in diet was such that it can be one specific factor that provided the transition from nomadic societies of hunter-gatherers to others of sedentary producers; in fact, from corn derived a large part of the economic, social and religious characteristics of the Mesoamerican peoples. Lynn V. Foster and Peter Mathews, in Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World, document how corn’s presence dominated the Maya landscape, their diets, and their beliefs, and held “the key to the development of more complex Mesoamerican society” Muller (2011).

The cultivation of corn was a key factor in health and success, as well as in relationships with surrounding tribes (Muller, 2011). The agricultural cycle was related to astronomy with the corn representing the central axis of its worldview. The link between the plant and humans led them to consider themselves as the men of corn, as well pointed out in the Popol Vuh (2015, pp 61)

Then our Makers Tepew and Q’uk’umatz began discussing the creation of our first mother and father. Their flesh was made of white and yellow corn. The arms and legs of the four men were made of corn meal. Then Grandmother Ixmunake ground the white and yellow ears of corn to make enough gruel to fill nine gourds to provide strength, muscle and power to the four new men.

Corn is present in religious ways, for offerings where they burn it with copal or copal pom, flowers, tobacco, alcohol, etc. In some ceremonies women drank Saka, which means corn mass and is a non-acoholic berverage made of cooked corn (mixtamal) (Gabriel, 2003). They offered Saka to their god Chaack before planting corn to protect it from wind, plagues and herbs, also asked for the rein to come for the growth of their crops (Márquez, 2006). Its importance is represented in the Mayan art too, like in the Cacaxtla mural in Tlaxcala, Mexico, where corn has human features such as eyes and a mouth (Muller, 2011).; in many archeological artifacts images of maize appears and in the Guatemalan textiles and costume. Maize, was also used for medical purposes, providing remedies against hepatitis, hypertension, diabetes, kidney problems, tumors, rheumatism, and other diseases (Álvaro, 2019)

Nowadays, corn is the most consumed basic grain for the Mayan people that plays an important role in the economy and the culture. In addition, corn is one of the plants with the highest plasticity to be cultivated in very diverse varieties of soils, heights above sea level and climates. In Guatemala, as well as in the Mesoamerican region, cultivation represents a long tradition of consumption, such as the home-made tortilla produced from the whole grain, that is the basis of food in most households, and other dishes like pozole, soaps and atoles. Torres (2008) describes that just in Mexico, have been identified at least 600 ways of preparing corn for food. ¿How many have you tried?

The plant is also used integrally for various purposes, some examples are: the use of the sweet sap of the stem as a substrate to make alcoholic beverages, the use of the modified leaves that cover the cob to wrap the tamales, and as raw material for the manufacture of handicrafts or fodder.

In fact, corn was an essential part of life in Mayan culture many years ago, and still is important in our traditions and its uses have been transformed and traveled the entire world.

For more information, visit our websites:
www.maya-ethnobotany.org
www.maya-ethnozoology.org
www.maya-archaeology.org

Blog prepared by Vivian Hurtado