History of Corn
Maize is native to the Americas and was the staple grain of the region for many centuries before Europeans reached the New World. The origin of maize remains a mystery. Conclusive evidence exists, from archaeological and palaeobotanical discoveries, that cultivated maize has existed in south-western North America for at least 3,000 years. Wild maize was once thought to have grown in the Tehuacán Valley of southern Mexico 7,000 years ago. More recent evidence puts the appearance of maize in that region at a much later date, about 4,600 years ago. Early wild maize was not much different in fundamental botanical characteristics from the modern maize plant.
Scientists cannot trace the ancestry of modern corn directly to a wild plant. the origin of corn probably includes Teosinte a wild grass closely related to corn. Some scientists believe that corn is direstly descended from teosinte.
Corn was most widely cultivated by the Aztec indians of Mexico, Mayans of Central America and Incas of South America. By the 1400's corn was grown from as far south as Chile to as far north as Canada. Europe knew nothing of corn until Christopher Columbus brought back some seeds to Spain after his voyage to Cuba. by the 1500's corn was a well established crop in the mediterranean region.
Before the 1800's farmers used wooden or cast iron ploughs. Mechanical Corn planters were invented in the early 1800's. Mechanical corn pickerscame into use during the 1930's. Today most corn in industrialized nations is harvested by machines that pick, husk, shell and clean the corn in one operation
Development of Hybrid corn
During the early 1900's Hybrid corn was being experinmented. The "experimenters" first established pure hereditary lines by inbreeding plants of the same variety. then they crossed 2 inbred lines to produce a single cross hybrids, which were rather vigorous. By crossing 2 single crosses they invented the double cross hybrids they were vigorous enough to make seed production economical. by the 1920's people were no longer saving seed to plant in the next crop.
This is Teosinte (the smallest cob) allong with primitive corn cobs alongside a modern corncob.
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