Corn is one of the five most common agricultural crops, competing in demand with rice, potatoes, rye and second only to wheat. Its unpretentiousness led to almost universal cultivation, which excludes, in particular, in Europe, only the regions beyond the Arctic Circle.
Corn flour, starch, butter, molasses, canned grains, popcorn are known to almost every inhabitant of the Earth. Corn is included in nutritious combined animal feed, used entirely as forage. Recycling food waste gives acetone, alcohol, raw materials for plastics, paper, adhesives, paints - just to list. How impoverished the national cuisine of European, Asian and African countries would have been, animal husbandry and various branches of production would be difficult if corn did not appear outside the American continent at the end of the 15th century.
Where is the birthplace of corn
The cradle of the great corn is the North American continent, the territory of modern Mexico. Maize researchers point to a span of nearly 9 millennia from the emergence of a "domesticated" culture. The finds, dating from about 4 and 3 millennia BC, indicate a very modest size of ears, 10 times smaller than modern ones. For comparison, the results of modern breeding are 6-meter trunks and 60-centimeter cobs.
It was the domestication of maize that brought prosperity and development to the tribes that cultivated corn fields. The high productivity of culture, its value for the growth of living standards became the reason for the appearance in the religious systems of the Indian tribes of the gods of maize - Sinteotl and his female hypostasis Chicomecoatl among the Aztecs, Yum-Kaash (Yum-Viila) and the goddess Kukuits among the Mayans.
The path of corn to Europe
From his second voyage, from the island of Hispaniola (Haiti) discovered by him in 1492, Christopher Columbus brought ear-like ears to Spain, borrowing the local name for the miracle plant - maize. The Aztecs called this gift of the gods "tlaoli" ("our body"), the Quechua Indians - "zara", in the language of the Aymara people - "thin". At first, the plant performed exclusively decorative tasks, decorating the estates with its exotic appearance. In the diary of the third voyage, Columbus already mentions the significant distribution of maize in Castile.
The next in the development of maize were the territories of Portugal, France, Italy, then - England, Turkey, the Balkans, North Africa. This global settlement took only about half a century. Populous China and India have become the next stage of expansion. In the 17th century, maize was brought to Moldova, and already in the 18th century maize was widespread here and saved poor families from hunger. In the Russian Empire, according to one version, maize appeared under the name of corn in the 18th century, after the conquest of the Crimea in the Russian-Turkish war.
