Maize
A Mexican grass with a dozen hard seeds is transformed into the most productive cereal on Earth.
- When
- Known to
- ± 500 years
- Era
- Neolithic, Holocene
Maize is domesticated from teosinte in the Balsas river valley of southern Mexico from around 7000 BCE. The transformation is the most drastic of any crop: teosinte bears a handful of seeds in stony cases on a branching stalk, and the changes required — a single stem, a large cob, naked kernels that stay attached — involve only a few genes but took thousands of years. Maize becomes the foundation of every Mesoamerican civilisation and, later, a staple worldwide.