Tracking the Ancestry of Corn Back 9,000 Years

New York Times ^ | Monday, May 24, 2010 | Sean B. Carroll

[SunkenCiv]

Many botanists did not see any connection between maize and other living plants. Some concluded that the crop plant arose through the domestication by early agriculturalists of a wild maize that was now extinct, or at least undiscovered. However, a few scientists working during the first part of the 20th century uncovered evidence that they believed linked maize to what, at first glance, would seem to be a very unlikely parent, a Mexican grass called teosinte... George W. Beadle, while a graduate student at Cornell University in the early 1930s, found that maize and teosinte had very similar chromosomes. Moreover, he made fertile hybrids between maize and teosinte that looked like intermediates between the two plants. He even reported that he could get teosinte kernels to pop. Dr. Beadle concluded that the two plants were members of the same species, with maize being the domesticated form of teosinte. Dr. Beadle went on to make other, more fundamental discoveries in genetics for which he shared the Nobel Prize in 1958... botanists led by my colleague John Doebley of the University of Wisconsin... discovered that all maize was genetically most similar to a teosinte type from the tropical Central Balsas River Valley of southern Mexico, suggesting that this region was the "cradle" of maize evolution. Furthermore, by calculating the genetic distance between modern maize and Balsas teosinte, they estimated that domestication occurred about 9,000 years ago.

[James C. Bennett]

Impossible.

The world is only 6000 years old.

/ sarc.

[SunkenCiv]

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	Gods Graves Glyphs	Thanks cajuncow. Here are a couple of related blam topics from a few years ago: Ancient Mexican Maize Varieties Maize (Corn) May Have Been Domesticated In Mexico As Early As 10,000 Years Ago To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
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[Eric in the Ozarks]

Thank a Mexican.

[JoeProBono]

[MountainDad]

Hey....knee high by the 4th and all....

[SunkenCiv]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1844873/posts?page=52#52

[gleneagle]

Oh my it has been genetically modified! Can’t eat or tolerate that can we.

[GSP.FAN]

I hate corn in Europe we fed it to the pigs and no self-respecting person would eat it....
It is a grain used in a lot of nasty products such as High Fructose and now Ethanol subsidized by the Gov.
A pox on the person who told humans to eat it...
Rant over........

[afraidfortherepublic]

Ping

[JoeProBono]

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

It is known that south of there, in the Amazon basin, as far back as 2500 BC, the natives were making “Terra preta”, artificially created, self-sustaining agricultural soil.

Rain forests normally have very poor soil, with most of the nutrients in the plants above it, and water tending to leech the nutrients out of the soil. But the natives figures out that a combination of low temperature charcoal, likely soaked in urine for a while, as well as smashed bone, feces, and baked pottery shards, when mixed in soil from 1 foot to 1 yard in depth, not only made it far better for plants, but tended to revitalize itself, continuing to keep itself fertile, even after hundreds of years.

Since flat, wet land is conducive to grasses, it is no surprise that after the harvest of a good year, those grains preserved for their quality to be used as seed might, in a relatively few generations, make some big jumps.

[Red_Devil 232]

Do you own a flame suit?

[Red_Devil 232]

Do you own a flame suit?

[MountainDad]

Re. 11

I don't know where you always get those pictures, but they crack me up!. LOL!

[GeronL]

He has known since he was 4 that he wanted to be a corn geneologist. lol. /sarc

[Sacajaweau]

I calced that it occurred 9,472 years ago. When are these people going to learn to be exact...:-)

[GSP.FAN]

Nope..The truth will protect me...;>)

[Sacajaweau]

Knee high....That’s feed corn.....

[MountainDad]

**Knee high....That’s feed corn.....**

Yep, your right! I just got home from sprayin'.