The history of maize

The corn comes from Central America, the formation is suspected in central Mexico, where maize is relatively fast to other Indian tribes in the Central, South and North America spread. Even in Canada and Chile came with corn in recent years. If the Indian tribes of Central America and Mexico and the southwestern corn was the most important cereal in the region, as it was a staple. Corn and therefore play an important role in mythology. Corn is the ancient American peoples of Mesoamerica sacred. It was a gift from the gods and livelihoods.

Corn is at the heart of most of the rituals associated with life agriculture of this region. The omnipresence of the corn plant in Mesoamerican mythology is evident in the genesis of the man himself in the myth of origin of the beans and Kakchikel, Ixmukané is the mother goddess, created with the participation of all the heavenly powers that people of ground corn. This connection between man and his food is also found in other traditions and pushing in the Mesoamerican cultures of normal human victims in a different light. The strength, heart and blood of people like the food of the gods of corn. People need to periodically be sacrificed to the gods, the life cycle from year to renew again and again.

In ancient Mesoamerica, maize was the food provided the means to express the sacred and secular life. Corn products deliver up to today in rural areas of Mexico up to 70 percent of the annual caloric intake. In the 15 th century, maize by Spanish explorers brought it to Europe. In the Old World, which started to give an exotic ornamental plant. Corn was cultivated grain, however until 17.

Century and thus displaced local crops. In the poorest segment of the population replaced wheat corn always scarce. At the end of the 17th century occurred more frequently in the poorer southern Europe a deficiency disease, pellagra. Was skin rash, weakness and death. Only in 1937 was recognized that pellagra is operating in continuous use, corn exclusively.

With simple and inexpensive treatment, yeast pellagra disappeared in mid-20th century. In memory remains pellagra as "a disease of development and progress of the disease induced is unfair and creates inequality"