Corn And Colonialism Summary

The Peoples of the Corn and Colonialism

Domestication of plants took place around the globe in seven locales during approximately the same period, around 8500 BC. Three of the seven were in the Americas, all based on corn: the Valley of Mexico and Central America (Mesoamerica); the South-Central Andes in South America; and eastern North America. In these seven areas, agriculture-based “civilized” societies developed in symbiosis with hunting, fishing, and gathering peoples on their peripheries, gradually enveloping many of the latter into the realms of their civilizations, except for those in regions inhospitable to agriculture. The history provided in this book is about the sacred corn food, and how people had migrated throughout vast majority

It was a sacred gift from their gods. Unlike most grains, corn cannot grow wild and cannot exist without attentive human care. Along with multiple varieties and colors of corn, Mesoamericans cultivated squash and beans, which were extended throughout the hemisphere, as were the many varieties and colors of potato cultivated by Andean farmers beginning more than seven thousand years ago. The governor of New France, following a military raid in the 1680s, reported that he had destroyed more than a million bushels of corn belonging to four Iroquois villages. Experts have observed that such population densities in pre-colonial America were supportable because the peoples had created a relatively disease-free paradise. There certainly were diseases and health problems, but the practice of herbal medicine and even surgery and dentistry, and most importantly both hygienic and ritual bathing, kept diseases at bay.,Ritual seat baths were common to all Native North Americans, having originated in Mexico. The majority of the Indigenous peoples of the Americans had healthy, mostly vegetarian diets based on the staple of corn and supplemented by wild fish, fowl, and four-legged

The first great cultivators of corn were the Mayans, initially centered in present-day northern Guatemala and the Mexican state of Tabasco. During the five-century apex of Mayan civilization, a combined priesthood and nobility governed. Although servile status was not hereditary, this was forced labor. Increasingly burdensome exploitation of labor and higher taxes and tribute produced dissension and uprisings, resulting in the collapse of the Mayan state, from which decentralized polities emerged. At its core was the cultivation of corn; religion was constructed around this vital food. The Mayan people developed art, architecture, sculpture, and painting, employing a variety of materials, including gold and silver, which they mined and used for jewelry and sculpture, not for use as currency. Beginning in AD 750, Toltec civilization dominated the region for four centuries, absorbing the Olmecs. Colossal buildings, sculptures, and markets made up the Totec cities, which housed extensive libraries and universities. They created multiple cities, the largest being Tula. The Toltecs’ written language was based on the Mayan form, as the calendar they used in scientific research, particularly in astronomy and