Makki/Corn/Maize

 

Archeological evidence suggests that Maize was first grown in Mexico, and then it travelled to the rest of the world, but there is another such evidence that it may have already been growning in India, much before that.

 

The domestication of Maize is thought by some researchers to have started 7,500 to 12,000 years ago. Research from the 1950s to 1970s originally focused on the hypothesis that maize domestication occurred in the highlands between the states of Oaxaca (Western Mexico) and Jalisco (Mexico), because the oldest archaeological remains of maize known at the time were found there.

 

It is a direct domestication of a Mexican annual teosinte, native to the Balsas River valley in south-eastern Mexico.

 

After European contact with the Americas in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, explorers and traders carried maize back to Europe and introduced it to other countries. Maize spread to the rest of the world because of its ability to grow in diverse climates.

 

Some carved structures in the hands of statue (Plate 1) at Somanathpur temple (12th Century A.D.), Karnataka are claimed to represent maize cobs because of their structural similarities. Based on this, it is inferred that maize was being cultivated in India even before Columbus (1498 A.D.) introduced it from America to Old World (Mangelsdorf 1974).

 

This implies that there was pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact between America and India or that the centre of origin of maize might not be Mexico as is generally known.