Please Don't Quote Me By Caralee Aschenbrenner NIXTAMALIZATION is offered as that which allowed the rise of the civilizations of MesoAmericans. Nixtamalization wasn't a military maneuver nor a laboratory breakthrough which caused certain cultures in the New World to outdo many another society. Nixtamalization was merely a process to treat maize to make it more nutritious, to have more protein value for human consumption. Never heard the word? Me neither but in looking for information concerning the dominant crop of our Northwest Illinois and beyondcorn, nixtamalization cropped up! Corn (and soybeans) have hardly ever been as beautiful as they are this year ... Thick, lush, green of all shades, variable even to the untrained eye, variable because they are "domesticated" plants; domesticated meaning that their genetic development is controlled by human beings. Domesticated plants and animals are much more varied than wild ones. While varied, there are drawbacks for the domesticated ones such as inability to reproduce without help. They also lose their physical defence mechanisms such as bristles, thorns, impermeable shells, etc. but in their domestication they will taste better and be more in demand than the wild ones and they are much more nourishing. Domestication is a trade off!

Corn has undergone thousands, perhaps, millions of processes and experiments in its domestication to what it is today. And all in all there are five major groups of corn ... Dent, flint, flour, sweet and pop! These have differences in their sugar content, starch, and hardness of the stored mixture plus to quote, "Add to this the different colors of the plants and the kernels, the different length of time necessary to ripen a crop, from the maize that produces an admittedly skimpy harvest in forty days to that which takes the better part of a year to ripen its ears plus varying endowments of resistance to drought, heat, insects and diseases and one can begin to visualize the number of varieties of maize."

Of maize? To be correct the reference books all call corn maize corn in much of the world is a generic term for a country's staple grain ... Differing plants in different places and times. Maize is a New World term that the Europeans picked up in the Antilles for a particular plant the Mexicans had domesticated over millenia-Zea mays.

Other than the different identity of corn and maize, there long has been debate over what is the ancestor of maize ... Is it maize or teosinte? The argument has been fierce. Maize pollen, however, has been found in 80,000 year old archeological diggings from below Mexico City, long before human occupation. Early domesticated maize also found in Mexico has been dated at 5,000 BC but which doesn't mean the domestication process was strictly carried out there. It was widespread and gradual throughout Mexico and Guatemala where yet today the most domesticated varieties are found. Wild maize does not exist today.

There have been ups and downs, yeas and nays in support of teosinte as the ancestor of maize but there are strikes against that even though it is a colloquial name for many plants in Mexico and Central America, making it more possible for that belief. There are annuals and perennials of teosinte with annuals being awarded a spot as a subspecies of maize though once it was a separate genus, (Euchlaena). Reference explains ... "Through a series of complex mutations Euchlaen might have developed the arrangement of a male flower; or tassel, at a distance from the ear and silk, the female portions. This is an arrangement unheard of among other members of the grass family but characteristic of maize."

In the 1880s the experiments began in earnest which might have told that maize was derived from teosinte, the process largely being because of its perennial nature. If it could be combined with the productivity of maize wouldn't that have been revolutionary? It would have been more sensational then hybridizing in the early decades of the twentieth century.

But to expand on maize being the great grandpa of maize, not teosinte, the latter has never been found in archeological digs of food debris. The taste of teosinte has never been discovered to have been written about though maize has, often.

... "Scientists have found pollen from plants in the botanical family named Zea that includes teosinte and maize, the ancestors of modern corn. The pollen found may be maize in the process of being domesticated. Zea is thought to have originated in western Mexico. Ancient farmers selectively bred Zea over thousands of years until it finally evoloved into the familiar corn with rows of seeds on a cob ... Eventually it became a common crop in the prehistoric Americas. When the ancient farmers were first planting it, it was just a type of grass with large seeds but a dependable source of food. Pollen for corn's ancestor was found in sediments dated at 5100 BC, perhaps the oldest known farming of corn-like plants. Pollen was also found dating to 4000 BC which suggests that they were also domesticating sunflowers at that early date, too. Cotton pollen is dated to 2500 BC. These pollens were found in defferent sediment layers, each dated, down to 24 feet below the surface ..." From the journal "Science" reported in The Rockford Register Star, 5/18/01 Do you suppose the maize growers of ancient times built "tepees" from the stalks such as this one constructed a few years ago at Fritchen's in Rockford?

Christopher Columbus said it was good. It was he, it is thought, to have taken seed of maize back to the Old World on the first return trip. It was written soon after in 1498 that maize was seen growing in Spain. And it traveled easily. It was found in Venetian fields by 1554. At that time the Venetians were leading sea traders but the Muslims had cut them off in the east so they anxiously planted maize crops to feed their populations ... And maize became a staple. Italian writers gave the American plant credit for not only saving them from starvation but said also from the plagues which so often ravaged Europe ... Because there was food, an easily grown food. Maize became the third most grown, important crop in the world behind wheat and rice.

All parts of it have been eaten from the tassel in times of famine to a sweet "syrup" extracted from the green stalk, this not to be confused with corn syrup which with corn starch and corn oil didn't come about until the late nineteenth century in a "triumph of mechanical and technical engineering." Beginning ears are stripped from the plant so the stalk manufactures a sweet, sweet juice which early explorer Cortes noted in Aztec markets.

Despite maize being credited with saving Europeans from famine and plague, maize did not save them from dietary deficiencies such as pellagra. The reason for that was that the ships returning from the New World brought the wonderful seed but not the process for preparing it ... nixtamalization which is a complicated process whereby the ripe maize grains are soaked and then cooked with lime or wood ash enabling the transparent skin on the grain, the pericarp, to be removed which makes the grain easier to grind. That enhances the protein value of the grain. By using the process those MesoAmericans coincidentally had far superior cultures than did those who didn't use the process. The nixtamalization made them healthier and smarter and ultimately, wealthier ... Etc., etc., etc!

The equipment to peel, grind, cook and grind the grain into nutritious bread, nixtamal into maize meal, has been discovered in diggings in Guaemala from the 1500 to 1200 BC. While the maize was excitingly received by the Europeans they didn't have the "machinery" because the ship's leaders believed that the mills in the Old World were better; more power and efficient ... However, it lacked a step or two or three otherwise.

Yes, maize, (corn!!) changed the world, nixtamalization improved it. There's always something to learn. We today enjoy the results of centuries of processes done long before now. And, too, we live right in the middle of sweet corn country ... OOPs, sweet maize country. Enjoy the bicolor like Paul Harvey talks about.

Comment on this story

Go back to Prairie Advocate Home Page