Looking at the skinny ears of teosinte, with just a dozen kernels wrapped inside a stone-hard casing, it is hard to see how they could be the forerunners of corn cobs with their many rows of juicy, naked kernels. Indeed, teosinte was at first classified as a closer relative of rice than of maize.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/25creature.html
Seeds that have just been sown will, with the right mixture of sunshine and rain, be knee-high plants by the Fourth of July and tall stalks with ears ripe for picking by late August. Corn is much more than great summer picnic food, however.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/25creature.html
For most of human history, our ancestors relied entirely on hunting animals and gathering seeds, fruits, nuts, tubers and other plant parts from the wild for food. It was only about 10,000 years ago that humans in many parts of the world began raising livestock and growing food through deliberate planting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/25creature.html
Beans seem to have been originally domesticated in Mexico’s Lerma-Santiago basin about 6,000 years ago. Beans were not grown in any significant quantities until they became a part of the diet that included maize and squash. Beans were also domesticated independently in the Andes.
http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/1851
By the time of the European invasions in the sixteenth century, the Indigenous peoples of Mexico had already domesticated more than 50 different plants, ranging from avocados to yucca. Three of these plants—maize (corn), beans, and squash—became the focus of American Indian agriculture in North and Central America.
http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/1851
The domestication of plants is something that happened independently in many different regions of the world. The domestication of plants marks a fundamental change in the way people interact with and perceive their environment. Domestication is basically evolution which has been directed through human intervention.
http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/1851
Beans: While maize was the most important food staple in ancient Mexico, beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) were second in importance. Beans seem to have been originally domesticated in Mexico and Guatemala and then diffused, along with maize, to other parts of the Americas.
http://nativeamericannetroots.net/diary/1851
Local cultures in North America, Mesoamerica, South America, China, and Africa each domesticated their own unique sets of plants and animals, and they did so by pathways quite different from those followed in the Middle East:
http://teachmiddleeast.lib.uchicago.edu/foundations/origins-of-civilization/framing-the-issues/issue-01.html
Native Americans alone domesticated nine of the most important food crops in the world, including corn, more properly called maize (Zea mays), which now provides about 21 percent of human nutrition across the globe. But despite its abundance and importance, the biological origin of maize has been a long-running mystery.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/25creature.html
The Middle East was the first place where people domesticated plants (ca. 8300 BCE) and animals (ca. 7500 BCE), ushering in the Neolithic period with its characteristic village economies based on food production.
http://teachmiddleeast.lib.uchicago.edu/foundations/origins-of-civilization/framing-the-issues/issue-01.html
in what region of the world was maize domesticated
Maize was domesticated in the region of Mexico. Maize was domesticated in the Mexico region of the world.