Fiesta de Cosecha - Mariana Murguía de Ferrer ©1999 Cantos Para Todos Volume VI

Roy E. Howard, ©1991, Cantos Para Todos

De la harina tortillas,
pero granos guardarás.

NÁHUATL POEM | EL DÍA BENDITO | EL CICLO DE LA VIDA | LA COSECHA

Maize: Gift from America's First Peoples

Columbus did not realize that the gift of maize was far more valuable than the spices or gold he hoped to find. He had no way of knowing that the history of maize traced back some 8,000 years or that it represented the most remarkable plant breeding accomplishment of all time. He might have been embarrassed if he had understood that then, as now, this plant developed by peoples he judged poor and uncivilized far outstripped in productivity any of the cereals bred by Old World farmers --wheat, rice, sorghum, barley, and rye. Were he alive today, he would certainly be astonished to see the extent to which the advent of maize has affected land use, food production, cuisine, and population growth around the world.

Walton Galinat, 1992, "Chilliesto Chocolate"
http://www.ag.iastate.edu/departments/agronomy/maizearticle.html

Maize, Ricardo J. Salvador, Agronomy Department, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. Adaptation of an article originally published in The Encyclopedia of Mexico: History, Culture and Society 1997, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers http://www.fitzroydearborn.com/encmex.htm