Press Release 09-049 Wild Grass Became Maize Crop More Than
8,700 Years Ago Probably domesticated in the Mexican tropical
forest New research says corn was domesticated from teosinte
1,500 years earlier than formerly documented. Credit and Larger
Version March 23, 2009 The earliest physical evidence for
domesticated maize, what some cultures call corn, dates to at
least 8,700 calendar years ago, and it was probably domesticated
by indigenous peoples in the lowland areas of southwestern
Mexico, not the highland areas. This new evidence comes from an
international team of researchers, who report the findings in
two companion papers in this week's Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences. They place maize domestication in Mexico
about 1,500 years earlier than previously documented there and
1,200 years earlier than the next earliest dated evidence for
maize in Panama. "Our primary goal was to document the early
history of maize domestication in the homeland of its wild
ancestor," said Anthony Ranere, Depa