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How Did Corn Grow Corn?

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Corn, potatoes, and chocolate are all important crops that originated in Latin America. These crops spread throughout the world and are important economically and for use as food. How domestic corn was developed Corn was derived from its ancestor teosinte, a wild grass which grows in parts of Central America and Mexico. Teosinte is different than corn in a number of ways. It does not grow on a large leaf covered cob, thus allowing it to break off the plant and spread more effectively and has a hard shell. Its color is similar to many rocks which decreases the chance of being eaten, unlike corn. There are six species of Teosinte: Zea mays ssp. huehuetenangensis which grows near the border of Chiapas, Mexico; Zea mays ssp. mexicana which grows …show more content…

The only evidence of early corn in Northern Mexico is in Tamaulipas in Northeastern Mexico. However, the early corn grown in Northeastern Mexico and Southwestern America are genetically different and show that they developed at approximately the same time. There are two major theories as to how corn started being grown in the American Southwest. One theory proposes that the knowledge of how to grow corn was spread by groups of foraging people. The other theory proposes that migrating farmers spread the knowledge. The theory that foragers spread the knowledge of corn growth has usually been more accepted; however, since 2000, the theory that migrating farmers spread the knowledge has been gaining acceptance. This theory suggests that domestic corn spread from Northwestern Mexico to Southwestern America when farmers moved north to obtain fertile land. There are a few areas in the southwestern United States that contain evidence of historical corn growth; these sites were in Arizona and New Mexico. The sites were Old Corn, McEuen Cave, Clearwater, Las Capas, and Three Fir Shelter. Old Corn is on the Colorado Plateau in western New Mexico, McEuen Cave is in the Gila Mountains in Eastern Arizona, Clearwater and Las Tapas exist in the Tucson Basin in Southern Arizona, and Three Fir Shelter is located on the Colorado Plateau in Northeastern Arizona. (Figure 2) http://www.pnas.org/content/106/50/21019.full These sites are geographically diverse and show the adaptability of corn in the American southwest, but more research needs done on the early history of corn in order to determine how corn diffused from Mexico to North America as there is little substantial evidence indicating how corn spread at this point.

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We can still see today that corn is majorly part of our diet, in america we have a lot of products that are mainly produced with corn as an ingredient. This led for them to find different ways to crop this but in a very similar way as well. One of the known culture and tribes were the Anasazi people. They were also referred as the Ancient people.

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The Aztec civilization’s advanced agricultural practices played a pivotal role in their territorial expansion across Mesoamerica. For example, the map in Document A proved that as the advancements

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The Aztecs were one of the most famous and successful early civilizations of the Americas that we know of, who ruled an empire in the modern day country of Mexico from 1350 to 1519. From their capital city of Tenochtitlan, now known as Mexico City, to their daily routines, the Aztecs had many achievements that they deserve recognition for. Two very important components in the history of the Aztecs are agriculture and human sacrifice. Although they both play huge roles in Aztec culture, historians should emphasize on their methods of farming. The reasons why historians should center their focus on the Aztecs' agricultural techniques are they affected the growth of their empire, were used on a huge scale, and were very unique in comparison to other

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The Aztecs had lots of knowledge about crops, so they had many different uses for different crops. In the Crops document it says “Maize could be stored for long periods of time, and in addition to being eaten as it was, it could be ground into flour and made into other foods.”. It also says “The pumpkin, for example, was used often because its seeds provided a great deal of protein. And the bottle gourd was grown because after being eaten, it could be used as a water container.”, and “...cotton plants and rubber trees to create products they needed like clothing and latex balls.” There were many different uses for the crops that the Aztecs grew, and everything was very thought out.

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For example, potatoes and maize were extremely critical to American agriculture. Subsequently, the staple crops were able to grow in harsh conditions, making them more convenient to grow than other crops like rice and wheat. The Columbian Exchange enabled people between the New and Old World to trade staple crops, which provided more nutrition to a larger

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The Columbian Exchange between the new world and the old world significantly change people’s lives. After 1492, Europeans brought in horses to America which changes the nomadic Native American groups’ living from riding on buffalos to horses. This interchange also change the diet of the rest of the world with foods such as corns (maize), potatoes which are major diet for European nowadays. 
Besides all the animals from old world to the new world, Spanish also brought in the diseases that Native Americans were not immune of, such as smallpox which led to a large amount of Native Americans’ deaths.

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2. Maize cultivation was a slow spread northward from Mexico, which caused the native societies to be smaller and less sophisticated. Although the maize cultivation was a slow spreading process, the maize was used for trade. The maize would be traded to help the higher population densities. Along with

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The development of Mesoamerica and Andean South America had one major item in common and that was neither civilization had the strong political powers that ran previous empires such as the Roman. Other likenesses were the agriculture both empires flourished with crops of corn, potatoes and beans because these products thrived in a variety of soils and with different climates (Wallech, 2013). Many differences that these two civilizations differ from others is simply because of location and the rivers that separated them and the ability to move easily and share cultural beliefs and achievements, but no matter how much space is between civilizations there was always violence and the pattern of societies rising and falling ("Notes on Mesoamerican

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The Inca empire. The Aztec Empire. Empire. A very large group of people ruled over by one person. The Aztec and Inca empire were both different empires but they did have things common.

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As time went on, gardens became plantations for more than just food production, for example cotton production, and apples became a major industry in North America. European fruits and vegetables dominated the new world in an exchange known as the Columbian exchange. According to the documentary America Before Columbus, the potato was first introduced in Spain from the Americas during the 1600's but it's cultivation and use has now spread to Italy, Northern/Eastern Europe, Austria, Poland, France, Switzerland, England, Ireland and Germany. Since the Irish had a limited amount of food available to them as a result of war, they quickly adopted the potato and one hundred years later the Irish population had more than doubled. Towns, like Berlin, grew into large cities and by the 1700’s the European population had exploded, all because of the introduction of the potato during the Columbian Exchange.

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Now I know that was a pretty corny joke, but the truth about corn is phenomenal. Corn began 10,000 years ago with the Native Americans. Planting our seed of knowledge, we begin with the Native Americans, who were the first people to domesticate corn. With a twist, corn originated from a grass called Teosinte. Teosinte and corn do not look fairly similar.

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The Environments shape had a part in forming Native American cultures and civilizations. Native Americans would used the surrounding land around them and the environment to suit their needs, they believed in respecting nature and any changes in it would result in a change for them to. The season determined how crops would grow, they were able to adjust their diets and food gathering skills to survive those changing seasons. Native Americans eventually developed an agriculture system based on: corn, beans, and squash, more commonly known as “three-sister” farming. This diet provided by the clever farming technique resulted in high population densities.

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Tenochtitlan had very little soil but it was extremely fertile. Aztec farmers grew crops of all sorts like squash, beans, chili peppers, and maize in chinampas. Chinampas were like gardens built on lakes. Chinampas were typically long and narrow, separated by canals in a wetland environment.

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