Maize: The Engine of American Civilization

[Music] ah corn the great american crop what would the world look like without it just imagine movie theaters without popcorn the midwest without rows of cornfields no sweet corn on the cob in the summer no corn tortillas to hold your tacos no children of the corn oh wait that last one might be a good thing even if you're a devoted carnivore and everything i've listed is just going over your head most of the meat you consume is likely corn fed which i dare say may make you a corn of war [Music] i could go on and on but i think i paint a grim picture of how much less our lives would be without corn but that's only the tip of the iceberg our world literally could not function without it corn is the most cultivated crop in the world with over 1 billion tons grown every year it's used for food biofuel animal feed and more if corn disappeared starvation would be rampant and things would look apocalyptic pretty quick corn was just as important to the ancient peoples of the americas as it is to us today and it's impossible to speak of ancient american civilization without mentioning corn but when you dig deeper corn has its own story and it's strangely fascinating so much so that i'm dedicating an entire episode to it few things have had so great an impact on the world as the domestication of corn now i admit i was born and raised in the corn belt of the united states and still happily live in the heart of it so perhaps i'm a little biased i grew up listening to people complain endlessly about living in a landscape largely characterized by the cornfield and while the humble cornfield may not match the grandeur of the rockies or the majesty of the mississippi i still think they're pretty regardless of where your feelings for corn fall on the spectrum i hope that at the end of this video you'll be able to appreciate corn for the engineering marvel that it is now before we start this video let's get something straight we're going to refer to corn by its proper name maze in the english-speaking world corn refers to the commonly grown local grain which could be any grain now maze is the technical term for the plant zaya maize which we commonly call corn so we're going to go with maize for the rest of the episode while we're on the topic i should also point out that this allows us to call corn mazes by the far superior name maze mazes and who doesn't love a corny pun joking aside i still need to tell you why the domestication of maize is so interesting before we can look at that let's see what grain domestication normally looks like let's look at the teacher's pet of crop domestication wheat wheat is similar to other grains and how they grow and reproduce so it's a good example to use after a wheat seed germinates and grows into a plant the stem terminates at the ear from which the seeds sprout under normal conditions once the stem is mature it will break up or disarticulate to use the technical term and release the seeds into the wind where they will hopefully take root and grow according to smithsonian archaeologist bruce smith when people domesticate a grain there are five major changes expected to the plant number one the seeds must ripen simultaneously you want all the seeds to be ripe when you're ready to harvest number two the seeds must be compacted in visible bunches the seeds should be easy to spot and easy to harvest number three the seeds must be retained by the plant in other words the seeds should not disarticulate but stick to the plant until someone can manually remove them number four the seeds must increase in size bigger seeds means more food number five the seeds must germinate rapidly and simultaneously you want the seeds to stay dormant in the ground for as little time as possible and to grow as quickly as possible let's consider these changes with the domestication of wheat by comparing wild wheat with its domesticated descendants as you can see there isn't that big of a difference it's like looking at wheat junior if wild wheat is a wolf domestic weed is a husky all that needed to be changed in the domestication were a few important genetic traits and this is what normal grain domestication looks like with that in mind let's turn to maize and begin with wild maize wait what's wild maize have you ever seen corn growing anywhere other than a corn field or a garden that's not a coincidence because in reality there's no such thing as wild maize to find the ancestor of maize we have to do some work well more like we need to turn to the smart people who spent their careers doing the work and ask them now many decades ago if you had asked the best and the brightest where you could find maze's wild ancestor you would have been stepping into a hurricane of controversy back in the 1930s two men harvard botanist paul mangelsdorf and stanford geneticist and future nobel prize winner george beadle had both proposed two theories about the origins of maize that would split the scientific community mangelddorf proposed that it descended from a complicated mix of extinct wild maize and the trypsicum genus of grass beetle on the other hand proposed the much more simple theory that the teosinte grass had been maze's ancestor this debate got real ugly and real personal real fast as only academic debates about things in the distant past can and if you think this is unique just wait till we discuss the settlement of the americas you're going to see some real fireworks there for most of the 1950s and 60s mangelsdorf theories held sway see in 1960 a scientist named richard mcneesh led an archaeological expedition to the taiwakan valley and meticulously combed the valley for evidence of early mesoamerican maize cultivation incredibly they found what they were looking for inside many rock shelters and caves they found thousands of ancient maze cobs that dated back from spanish contact to as far back as 7 000 years ago now what really made this sensational to mangelsdorf was that the earliest cops were tiny primitive versions of maize and when i say tiny i mean teeny tiny these were no bigger than a cigarette butt the mangelsdorf camp was thrilled they believed that this was the extinct wild maze that they'd been searching for unfortunately for mangle's dwarf and company george beedle was not so easily persuaded he spent the 70s going around mexico studying mutations in wild teosinte plants and came to the conclusion that with only a small amount of genetic changes teosinte could be transformed into an early version of maize in subsequent decades genetic research began to bear this out and vindicate george beetle in fact genetic testing has managed to hone in on a very specific species of teosinte balsas teosinte from the balsas river region of mexico as the most likely ancestor of all modern mays but why was this debate so intense clearly this theory doesn't sound that far-fetched right well let's take a closer look at the teosinte plant well that's not very impressive this is actually much smaller than it looks here's a better picture for scale if you were expecting maize junior i'm sorry to disappoint you if teosinte is a wolf maze is the chihuahua this looks nothing like modern maze and that's part of what made beatles position so unbelievable that transformation to modern maze is quite frankly a miracle let's break this down teosinte is a grass that grows in central america frankly it's not very impressive and its potential is far from obvious its ears are about an inch long at max and it only contains about 7 to 12 seeds these seeds are not soft like maize kernels but covered by a hard outer shell that protects it getting this into a palatable state is a real chore unless you heat it and pop it like popcorn which is something that george beetle would actually do during his lectures to prove that teosinte could be consumed by the way an entire ear of teosinte has less nutritional value than a single maize kernel what's even weirder is that while other wild grains have been found with mutations that block disarticulating this has never been found in teosinte not even george beatles searches for mutations up and down mexico could turn up a single specimen in fact it's a complete mystery how teosinte's disarticulation was suppressed whoever the people were that first found this measly grass and decided to start cultivating it and manipulating it they certainly rose to the challenge this process would have begun at the latest by 6000 bce but recent studies have proposed dates as far back as 9000 bce as i mentioned earlier these first maze cobs were tiny at this point they were not a staple food but just one of many items on the menu in time however maze got bigger and better people seem to have never stopped tinkering with it and indeed today we're still tinkering with maze in fact since maze was created it has become so reliant on human attention that it cannot reproduce without humans those seeds have no way to escape the husk as anyone who's ever had to shuck maize before can attest it takes a lot of effort to get to those seeds teosinte by comparison has no problem spreading its own seeds to get from teosinte to modern maize must have required incredible dedication on the parts of generations of ancient mesoamerican farmers who pushed the genetics of this grass to their utmost limit keep in mind this was not a singular event maize was always being improved through all of american history by just about anyone who was growing it thus we should look at the domestication of maize not as an event but as a continuing process that took millennia penn state university geneticist nina fedorov summarized this very well when in 2003 she called modern maze man's first and perhaps his greatest feat of genetic engineering that's high praise indeed for ancient maize farmers even more impressive is the sheer variety of maize that exists today maize comes in a dizzying array of colors and sizes that are all used for different purposes in fact there's more variety in maize today than there is in wild teosinte in mexico alone there are 50 genetically unique land races of maize often several in a single area this is a testament to the dedication that maize farmers past and present have in their craft you see maize open pollinates and it spreads a lot of pollen it's the loose promiscuous plant on the farm that knows how to get around normally this open pollination of maize would turn these individual varieties into a homogenous species except that holding back this natural force are the maize farmers carefully sorting through their crops to choose the correct seeds to sow next year they have to make sure that no hybrids are getting planted i can't stress this enough but maize has always been and continues to be carefully manipulated down to the present day what also makes mazes domestication and the indigenous reliance office so interesting is that you can't just live off maize alone i mean you can but you'll suffer from some very unpleasant nutritional deficiencies maize is poor in supplying the amino acids lysine and tritiphan which help make niacin if maize is just a small part of a larger diet this isn't a problem you'll get those nutrients from elsewhere but if it's your staple crop and primary food source that's a big problem you'll begin to suffer the effects of pellagra to combat this native americans used a process called niche demolition to enhance the nutritional value of maize that word derives from the na waddle word for maize flour and ashes neshli and tamale and yes that's the same tamale that we get the word tamale from niche demolition involves boiling and then soaking the maize kernels in an alkaline solution most commonly from wood ashes or ground up limestone the alkaline will soften the kernels and activate the niacin in the maize so that it can be absorbed by the body interestingly this seems to have only been used in mesoamerica and north america there's very little evidence for it in south america but that's probably because it wasn't as big an issue south america had potatoes in maniac for staple crops so they were stocked when people first started cultivating maize in europe and africa they were unaware of this process and so many early growers of maize would suffer from pellegra due to their reliance on it it wasn't until the 20th century that people finally figured out the cause of this when they began curing pellagra by adding brewer's yeast to their diet native americans were always aware of this and it's really wild to me that no one bothered to see how they were subsisting off corn without any trouble however many native americans also had another trick up their sleeve that enhanced the value of maize the three sisters this involved growing beans and squash in tandem with the maize when you plant all three together the maize provides a stalk that the beans can grow up and around the beans help replenish nutrients in the soil the squash will spread out and help shade and protect the roots of the maize so by cultivating them together not only do they help the crops grow and stave off soil exhaustion but they also provided additional sources of important nutrients thanks to the three sisters and other crops and foods the people of the americas had an incredibly rich diet after maize was domesticated and began to be more intensively cultivated it didn't stay in central mexico no good idea goes unnoticed and may spread throughout mexico and central america quickly maize could be brought to new areas by migrating people taking a reliable food source with them or through trade between neighboring peoples the olmec and maya were cultivating maize when their civilizations began to blossom looking south by 5500 bce it was being grown in panama by 4700 bce it had arrived in peru it would eventually go as far south as chile to the north maize would arrive in the american southwest at roughly 2000 bce at 1000 ce it was in the mississippi valley in the eastern united states the only areas that maize didn't reach before european contact were in the amazon the pacific coast and most of canada how do we know where may's spread and how well i'm glad you asked because the answer is more interesting than you'd expect obviously as we saw earlier with richard magnesh's scouring of the tewa khan valley archaeological maze remains are plentiful and they can be carbon dated easily archaeologists can also search for tools of maze processing like cooking utensils and grinding stones or as they're more commonly known in this context monos and matates oftentimes they can have almost microscopic maize remains on them that can be dated those are great direct methods of finding maize but there's another indirect method of identifying the spread of maize pollen now remember what i mentioned earlier maize produces a lot of pollen that's cast on the wind sending it far and wide maize pollen has the unique qualities of being easy to identify and like all pollen settling on surfaces and remaining there until it's disturbed when pollen lands in water it sinks to the bottom and can remain in the sediment indefinitely so if scientists take a sample core from a lake bed they can identify the pollen easily now the pollen molecules themselves can't be carbon dated but any organic material with it can be which gives you a good idea of how old it is this allows scientists to find indirect evidence of maize even when we have no cobs or food remains there are many cases where organic maize remains take us back so far but pollen evidence pushes the arrival of maize back even farther where maze did arrive in a new place it eventually transformed the culture and society when maze arrived it didn't end the hunter-gatherer lifestyle overnight that took time early maze cultivators were likely not sedentary but probably planted maize in the spring only to return and harvest it later as mace became more and more productive and more and more reliable as a staple crop it would allow people to become more and more sedentary a good example of this is in the american southwest in modern day arizona and new mexico maize originally arrived in this area no later than 2000 bce it was even present among archaic hunter-gatherers further north while it was definitely being consumed it didn't become a staple crop until about a thousand years later once it did become a staple crop it enabled civilizations like the hohokam and the ancient pueblo to thrive in the eastern united states maize farming left a huge impact on life there too the largest indigenous city in the eastern united states cahokia was only made possible by intensive maize agriculture maize agriculture also helped transform the whole noshoni into a militaristic matriarchy it was also important on the western coast of south america as well but it wasn't the sole staple crop like it was in mesoamerica and north america it was definitely consumed and appreciated but the truth is the andean coast and highland areas already had plenty of other foods to sustain them however maize allowed them a prized commodity that no other plant could offer chicha which is maize beer chicha was beloved by the andean peoples and it became a feature of social and religious gatherings archaeologists have even discovered remains of large chicha breweries which attest to its popularity maize was so important that it often took a special place in the local mythology and culture in our olmec episode we saw that the olmec had a maze deity marked by a cleft in his forehead from which the maze grows maize clearly held an exalted place in the olmec world view this would be shared by later peoples of mesoamerica both the maya and aztec had their own maize deities that were revered but maize's importance ran much deeper than that in maya mythology the god shmukane created humans from ground maze and blood thus mace wasn't just the main source of food but a key ingredient in human life itself one that had to be repaid to the gods similar themes are also present in other mythologies as well most notably in the indigenous people of the american southwest maize is very prominent in the mythologies of the eastern united states and canada as well mythologies from the cherokee the muskogee the lakota and the pinepscot to name a few all feature the origin of corn as an important theme in their mythologies we'll save those stories for a later episode but the important point is that maze was vital for the survival of many people and they were keenly aware of this fact and accorded maze a fitting place in their world view in south america mays didn't get quite the reverence it got in mesoamerica you can still find examples of deities with maize like this depiction of the moche decapitator deity and you can see it in common art as well chicha beer however was where maze really assumed a singular role it was a feature of many rituals large or small especially important was its use in religious ceremonies most notably as an offering to the gods and ancestors it wasn't just great for relaxing and drinking with your buddies it was sacred i don't think it's any exaggeration to say that maize was the engine of ancient american civilization and heck we haven't even touched on maze's impact on the rest of the world after the colombian exchange unfortunately this channel focuses on pre-columbian history so i'll leave that for another channel maize allowed so much of ancient america to thrive it was incredibly transformative and formed the building blocks of so many cultures this is all the more remarkable when you consider its very humble origins the teosinte plant remember maize is so far removed from its wild ancestor that it's completely dependent on people we may think of ourselves as the great exploiters of that balsas teosinte grass but archaeologist michael blake offers an interesting contrast usually when we talk about domestication we focus solely on the subjects of human intervention and transformation that is the plants and animals that have been transformed we typically discuss the transformation of people in terms of cultural evolution the emergence of agriculture and social political and economic complexity so powerful is our image of ourselves as masters of our own history that it's difficult to imagine our utter dependence on the resources that we think we control however humans are resources for other species as well from the standpoint of zea maize humans are agents of dispersal if a sentient plant that wished to propagate itself and spread as far as possible could choose a species to manipulate it could certainly do worse than choosing humans by being genetically flexible zea mace has persuaded humans to move its seed around the globe faster and farther than any other plant in history maze's power over us is rather intimidating and we cannot easily or practically release ourselves from its grip in fact maze is becoming year by year increasingly interwoven into our human existence our global economy depends on it just as xayah mays depends on us humans grow maize and maize grows humans that's pretty amazing when you think about it and yes that pun was totally intended the next time you're stuck driving through endless maze fields or popping some popcorn for your movie night have a little appreciation for the incredible achievement that maze is it's not just a plant it's not just food it might just be humanity's greatest invention and with that i hope you've enjoyed this episode support us on patreon follow us on facebook and don't forget to like and subscribe for more ancient american content see you later [Music] [Music] do

Channel: Ancient Americas

Views: 73,068

Keywords: Maize, corn, ancient america, ancient americas, civilization, domestication, corn domestication, maize domestication

Id: dYHEwTQHt24

Length: 23min 35sec (1415 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 15 2020

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[u/SoonToBeAutomated]

I recently found the Anicent Americas channel and after binging the catalogue I think this was my favorite.