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Maize / m eɪ z / (Zea mays), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native Americans planted it alongside beans and squashes in the Three Sisters polyculture.
The process to develop the agricultural knowledge for cultivation took place over a 5,000 to 6,500 year period. Squash was domesticated first, with maize second and beans third. [21] [22] Squash was first domesticated some 8,000–10,000 years ago. [23] [24]
These founder crops were domesticated in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period, [4] between 10,500 and 7,500 years ago. [5] Different species formed the basis of early agricultural economies in other centres of domestication. For example, rice was first cultivated in the Yangtze River basin of East Asia in the early Neolithic.
Food historian Lois Ellen Frank calls potatoes, tomatoes, corn, beans, squash, chili, cacao, and vanilla the "magic eight" ingredients that were found and used only in the Americas before 1492 and were taken via the Columbian Exchange back to the Old World, dramatically transforming the cuisine there. [17] [18] [19] According to Frank, [20]
Archaeologists have uncovered further evidence of a pre-colonial “garden city” in Bolivia where ancient Amazon people lived largely reliant on maize agriculture and raising muscovy ducks.. The ...
Corn, beans and squash were domesticated in Mesoamerica around 3500 BCE. Potatoes, quinoa and manioc were domesticated in South America. In what is now the eastern United States, Native Americans domesticated sunflower and sumpweed around 2500 BCE. [11]
Coxcatlan Cave also produced domesticated plants in components dated between 5,000 and 3,400 BC, or better known as the Coxcatlan Phase. [8] The Coxcatlan Phase was a phase where the people and animals living in Tehuacan Valley divided their time between small hunting encampments and large temporary villages.
The first three subspecies are teosintes; the last is maize, or corn, [4] the only domesticated taxon in the genus Zea. [citation needed] The genus is divided into two sections: Luxuriantes, with Z. diploperennis, Z. luxurians, Z. nicaraguensis, Z. perennis; and Zea with Z. mays.