Maize for the Gods : Unearthing the 9,000-year History of Corn

281 Pages·2015·375.818 MB·English

by  Michael Blake

Maize for the Gods
Unearthing the 9,000-Year
History of Corn
Michael Blake
university of california press
Maize for the Gods
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support
of the Ahmanson Foundation Humanities Endowment Fund
of the University of California Press Foundation.
Maize for the Gods
Unearthing the 9,000-Year
History of Corn
Michael Blake
university of california press
University of California Press, one of the most
distinguished university presses in the United States,
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University of California Press
Oakland, California
© 2015 by The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blake, Michael, 1953– author.
Maize for the Gods : unearthing the 9,000-year history
of corn / Michael Blake.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-520-27687-1 (cloth : alk. paper) —
isbn 978-0-520-28696-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) —
isbn 978-0-520-96169-2 (ebook)
1. Corn—History. I. Title. II. Title: Unearthing the
9,000-year history of corn.
sb191.m2b657 2015
633.1′5—dc23 2015004625
Manufactured in the United States of America
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In keeping with a commitment to support
environmentally responsible and sustainable printing
practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures
Natural, a fi ber that contains 30% post-consumer waste
and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso
z39.48–1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
1. The Archaeology of Maize 17
2. The Place of Maize in (Agri)cultural Origin Stories 37
3. Old Puzzles and New Questions about Maize’s
Origins and Spread 53
4. Timing Is Everything: Dating Maize 74
5. Maize through a Magnifying Glass: Macroremains 100
6. Maize through a Microscope: Microremains 115
7. Elemental Maize: Tracing Maize Isotopically 135
8. Genetically Modifi ed Maize the Old Way—By Agriculture 154
9. Daily Tools and Sacred Symbols 176
Notes 211
Glossary 229
References 233
Index 255

Illustrations
figures
0.1. Okiek men drinking maize beer / 5
0.2. Christine Hastorf demonstrating the water fl otation method / 7
0.3. Household members discarding their daily trash and fl oor
sweepings in Chanal, Mexico / 9
0.4. Excavation crew member Vicente Pérez reconstructing the
staircase of a temple platform at the site of Canajasté in Chia-
pas, Mexico / 10
0.5. Charred maize kernels and cob fragments recovered during the
fl otation of soil samples at the site of Aquiles Serdán in Chiapas,
Mexico / 11
0.6. John Smalley and Nadine Gray chopping up fresh maize stalks
to make maize stalk beer / 14
1.1. Schematic drawing showing the shape of a modern hybrid maize
plant and a teosinte plant / 18
1.2. The earliest directly dated maize cobs, recovered at Guilá
Naquitz Cave in the Oaxaca Valley / 18
1.3. Photo of excavations in progress at Guilá Naquitz Cave / 19
1.4. The phylogenetic relationships of six species and subspecies of
teosinte in the genus Zea and their relation to a close cousin,
Tripsacum / 25
1.5. The Xihuatoxtla Rockshelter in Guerrero, Mexico / 31
vii
viii | Illustrations
1.6. Multicolored, dried ears of maize in Chanal, Mexico / 35
2.1. Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Harvesters, 1565 / 41
2.2. Portrait of Adam Smith / 42
2.3. View toward the location of Villa Rica on the Caribbean coast,
taken from the archaeological site of Quiahuiztlán in Veracruz,
Mexico / 48
2.4. A fragment of Diego Rivera’s famous Huaxtec Civilization or
“Maize” mural in the National Palace in Mexico City / 49
3.1. A stand of maturing teosinte (Zea mays ssp. mexicana) / 54
3.2. An ear of mexicana teosinte / 55
3.3. Teosinte ears / 56
4.1. Walton C. Galinat’s reconstruction of hypothetical wild
maize / 81
4.2. Drawing reconstructing one of Paul Mangelsdorf’s famous
photographs depicting the evolution of corn / 82
4.3. An example of a printout from the OxCal website, showing the
radiocarbon calibration curve estimate for a maize AMS date
sample from Bat Cave in New Mexico / 84
4.4. View of work in progress at El Gigante Cave in Honduras / 89
4.5. Maize starch grains embedded within carbonized organic
material adhering to a piece of broken pottery recovered at the
site of Santa Ana-La Florida in Ecuador / 97
5.1. Transverse cross section of a typical ear of maize / 105
5.2. Longitudinal cross section of the ear of maize shown in
fi gure 5.1 / 106
5.3. Morphological measurements of maize remains from individu-
ally dated maize cobs found at El Riego Cave in the Tehuacán
Valley, Mexico / 110
5.4. Ears of maize in the International Maize and Wheat Improve-
ment Center / 113
6.1. A pine tree releasing a pollen cloud into the air on a
windy day / 117
6.2. High-magnifi cation images of maize pollen produced by a
scanning electron microscope / 118
6.3. High-magnifi cation images of Zea phytoliths / 121
6.4. Sonia Zarrillo scraping charred organic residues from a ceramic
fragment recovered at the Santa Ana-La Florida site in Ecua-
dor / 122
Illustrations | ix
6.5. Standard pollen profi le chart from Sipacate 14 in Guatemala / 129
7.1. Postdoctoral fellow Paul Szpak prepares a bone collagen sample
for mass spectrometer analysis / 139
7.2. Baseline chart showing the distribution of stable carbon and
nitrogen values for diff erent organisms in various environ-
ments / 142
7.3. Stable carbon and nitrogen measurements for the archaeological
sample of humans in the Soconusco region of Chiapas,
Mexico / 146
7.4. Graph showing chronological changes in stable carbon isotope
values across the Americas / 151
8.1. General pattern of allele inheritance / 155
8.2. Phylogenetic tree showing the relationships among nine regional
varieties of maize and three subspecies of teosinte / 158
8.3. The major phenotypical changes brought about by a mutation
in the teosinte glume architecture1 gene / 163
9.1. A Tzeltal Maya kitchen in the town of Chanal in Chiapas,
Mexico / 179
9.2. Metate fragments from house fl oors and middens at Cana-
jasté / 181
9.3. Mano fragments from house fl oors and middens at Cana-
jasté / 181
9.4. A scene from Fray Bernardino de Sahagún’s General History of
the Things of New Spain / 183
9.5. Steam rises from boiled maize that has just been poured into a
colander / 187
9.6. A small olla covered with a broken comal, which was used to
bury an infant, recovered at the site of Canajasté / 189
9.7. Incised jade celts depicting the Olmec Maize God fl anked by
four celts marking the world axis and the four cardinal or
intercardinal directions / 194
9.8. Symbols representing maize, found on the Cascajal
Block / 195
9.9. Fragment of early Olmec Calzadas Carved pottery with an
incised symbol possibly representing maize / 196
9.10. Depiction of the Olmec Maize God on a stone monument from
the sunken court at the ceremonial center of Teopantecuanitlán
in Guerrero, Mexico / 197