Read Online A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil MacGregor - Free Book Online
Authors: Neil MacGregor
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people, going back all the way before the Maya and even into the Olmec civilization.
So our maize god is not just a hauntingly beautiful statue: he gives us a real insight into the way ancient American society thought about itselfand its environment. He represents both the fact of the agricultural cycle of planting, harvesting and replanting, and the faith in a parallel human cycle of birth, death and rebirth. But even more than this, he is the stuff of which the Central Americans are made. Where the Hebrew god made Adam out of dust, the Mayan gods used maize to make their humans. The mythical story is told in the most famous epic in the whole of the Americas, the Popol Vuh. For generations, this was passed on through oral traditions before finally being written down in the seventeenth century.
And here is the beginning of the conception of humans and of the search for the ingredients of the human body … So they spoke: the bearer, begetter, the makers, modellers – and a sovereign plumed serpent – they sought and discovered what was needed for human flesh. It was only a short while before the sun, moon and stars were to appear above the makers and modellers. Split place, bitter water place, is the name, the yellow corn, white corn, came from there. And this was when they found the staple foods, and then the yellow corn and white corn were ground. After that they put into words the making, the modelling of our first mother-father, with yellow corn, white corn alone for the flesh, food alone for the human legs and arms for our first fathers, the four human works.
Why did maize become the favoured food and the revered grain of the Americas rather than wheat or some kind of meat? The answer lies not in maize’s divine connections, but in the environment that Central America offered. In that part of the world around 9,000 years ago, other food resources were very limited. There were no easily domesticated animals, such as the pigs, sheep or cattle you would find elsewhere in the world, and the staples were a trinity of plants that were slowly cultivated and tamed – squashes, beans and maize. But beans and squashes didn’t become gods. Why did maize?
The plant from which maize derives, the teosinte, is wonderfully adaptable. It’s able to grow in both the lush wet lowlands and the dry mountainous regions, which means that farmers can plant crops in any of their seasonal dwellings. Constant harvesting of the grain encourages the plants to grow larger and more abundantly, so maize can quickly become plentiful – farmers generally got a healthy return on their invested labour. Crucially, maize is a rich carbohydrate that gives you a rapid energy hit. Unfortunately, it is also pretty stodgy, and so from very early on farmers cultivated an ingenious accompaniment – the indigenous chilli. It has very limited nutritional value, but it is uniquely able to liven up dull carbohydrates – and its development and widespread use across Central America is a resounding demonstration that we’ve been foodies for as long as we’ve been farmers.
By AD 1000, maize had spread north and south, virtually through the whole length of the Americas, which is perhaps surprising given that, in its earliest form, not only did maize have little taste, it was practically inedible. It couldn’t just be boiled and eaten straight away as it is today. The easy digestibility of modern maize is thanks to the selective breeding of the crop by generations of farmers, each choosing seeds from the ‘best’ plant to cultivate for the next crop. But 9,000 years ago the maize cob was very hard, and eating it raw would have made you seriously ill. The raw kernel needed to be cooked in a mixture of water and white lime. Without this elaborate process, the two key nutrients in the cereal, the amino acids and vitamin B, would not be released. After that, it had to be ground into a paste and then made into an unleavened dough. The god of maize
So our maize god is not just a hauntingly beautiful statue: he gives us a real insight into the way ancient American society thought about itselfand its environment. He represents both the fact of the agricultural cycle of planting, harvesting and replanting, and the faith in a parallel human cycle of birth, death and rebirth. But even more than this, he is the stuff of which the Central Americans are made. Where the Hebrew god made Adam out of dust, the Mayan gods used maize to make their humans. The mythical story is told in the most famous epic in the whole of the Americas, the Popol Vuh. For generations, this was passed on through oral traditions before finally being written down in the seventeenth century.
And here is the beginning of the conception of humans and of the search for the ingredients of the human body … So they spoke: the bearer, begetter, the makers, modellers – and a sovereign plumed serpent – they sought and discovered what was needed for human flesh. It was only a short while before the sun, moon and stars were to appear above the makers and modellers. Split place, bitter water place, is the name, the yellow corn, white corn, came from there. And this was when they found the staple foods, and then the yellow corn and white corn were ground. After that they put into words the making, the modelling of our first mother-father, with yellow corn, white corn alone for the flesh, food alone for the human legs and arms for our first fathers, the four human works.
Why did maize become the favoured food and the revered grain of the Americas rather than wheat or some kind of meat? The answer lies not in maize’s divine connections, but in the environment that Central America offered. In that part of the world around 9,000 years ago, other food resources were very limited. There were no easily domesticated animals, such as the pigs, sheep or cattle you would find elsewhere in the world, and the staples were a trinity of plants that were slowly cultivated and tamed – squashes, beans and maize. But beans and squashes didn’t become gods. Why did maize?
The plant from which maize derives, the teosinte, is wonderfully adaptable. It’s able to grow in both the lush wet lowlands and the dry mountainous regions, which means that farmers can plant crops in any of their seasonal dwellings. Constant harvesting of the grain encourages the plants to grow larger and more abundantly, so maize can quickly become plentiful – farmers generally got a healthy return on their invested labour. Crucially, maize is a rich carbohydrate that gives you a rapid energy hit. Unfortunately, it is also pretty stodgy, and so from very early on farmers cultivated an ingenious accompaniment – the indigenous chilli. It has very limited nutritional value, but it is uniquely able to liven up dull carbohydrates – and its development and widespread use across Central America is a resounding demonstration that we’ve been foodies for as long as we’ve been farmers.
By AD 1000, maize had spread north and south, virtually through the whole length of the Americas, which is perhaps surprising given that, in its earliest form, not only did maize have little taste, it was practically inedible. It couldn’t just be boiled and eaten straight away as it is today. The easy digestibility of modern maize is thanks to the selective breeding of the crop by generations of farmers, each choosing seeds from the ‘best’ plant to cultivate for the next crop. But 9,000 years ago the maize cob was very hard, and eating it raw would have made you seriously ill. The raw kernel needed to be cooked in a mixture of water and white lime. Without this elaborate process, the two key nutrients in the cereal, the amino acids and vitamin B, would not be released. After that, it had to be ground into a paste and then made into an unleavened dough. The god of maize