Amaizing!

However, despite the domestication of maize, settled agricultural village communities did not really develop in Mexico until about 2000-1500 BC. In other formative societies around the world, evidence suggests that villages appeared very shortly after the domestication of cereal crops. Why the delay in Mexico? As yet this has not really been answered by archaeology. A possible reason is that maize itself took much longer to evolve to a crop which could actually support a settled community. As a consequence people remained dependant on gathering food and hunting for a longer period. The evidence for this is that the maize that was produced at the time of the Conquest, and for some considerable time prior to that, could not be grown without human assistance, and had no obvious wild ancestors.

Pic 2: Exhibition on the story of corn, Museum of Popular Culture, Mexico City

As farming methods improved, surplus maize was produced and other foods became more plentiful. Not everyone had to farm. Some people became craftsmen, others administrators, priests and soldiers. Villages grew into towns, and towns grew into cities, with temples for the priests and palaces for the rulers. Writing proliferated, art became more sophisticated. Kings and armies became more powerful, cities became states. Although this process occurred in other parts of the world, it occurred in Mexico quite independently, and it would not have occurred had it not been for maize.

Pic 4: Ancient teosinte compared to modern corn

Unlike the Old World where a wide variety of cereal crops were farmed, Meso-America only had one, maize. Other foodstuffs were grown in Mexico as mentioned before, but the only cereal crop that was cultivated was maize. Maize was always and everywhere in ancient Mexico the fundamental source of sustenance. Animal domestication never had a significant role in Mexican food production, the simple reason was that there were no large animals, like sheep, cattle, pigs, or horses. There was a type of dog that was domesticated and eaten, but never on a large scale. Consequently hunting was not a feature as it was in Medieval Europe, or in the ancient Old World. People in Mexico were more or less wholly reliant on what they grew, and what they grew was, predominantly, maize.

Pic 6: An Aztec altar with maize decoration, probably used for sacrifice

Ancient Mexican society generally had a fatalistic outlook because ancient Mexican society was so utterly dependant on those forces of nature which were beyond its control. This fatalism became an integral part of ancient Mexican religion. For Mexican civilization to survive, the gods had to be placated. People would ensure the survival of the gods, by feeding the gods, who in return would ensure the survival of the people by guaranteeing rainfall, sunshine and hence a good maize crop, but this arrangement had huge and to the European mind gruesome consequences.
Maize was vital to the very existence of ancient Mexican societies, it had enormous mythical implications. It played a central role in the creation myths of all Meso-American peoples. To the Aztecs time was divided into five ages or suns. The Aztecs lived in the fifth age. Each of the first four ages had its own sun and beings, but none proved successful, and the gods brought each age and their respective suns to an unfortunate end through storms, volcanic eruptions, and floods.

Pic 8: The 5 Suns or World Eras at the centre of the Aztec Sunstone: illustration by Miguel Covarrubias

It was only then that the fifth sun appeared. The fifth sun was known as Tonatiuh, one of the most powerful gods of the Aztec pantheon. Maize was and remained integral to the continued existence of the Aztecs in this fifth age. Maize defined this fifth age. The gods had created people and maize was the gift that the gods had given to the people. The people owed a huge debt to the gods because the gods had given them life, and the means of sustaining life ie maize. In return the people must ensure the continued existence of the gods so that the gods could fulfil their obligation of providing rain and sunshine and consequently maize. The gods helped Tonatiuh, the sun, every night on his journey through the underworld, so that the sun shone once again in the morning, to ripen the maize. To enable Tonatiuh to keep shining and to assist the other gods in helping Tonatiuh in his nightly battles, Tonatiuh and the other gods needed constant feeding.

Pic 10: Tonatiuh, god of the sun

The Aztec pantheon was all encompassing and is very complicated to understand. Apparently different gods had many different functions, it appears that there was much fusion between the multitude of gods, and that although specific traits were allocated to specific gods, these traits were by no means exclusive to any one god. The Aztec god of maize had various forms. As with many Aztec gods, the maize god had a male and a female identity, and also different manifestations. Xilonen was the virgin goddess of young maize, the name means tender ears of maize. She was beautiful like the slender cob and the long and silky maize tassles.

Pic 12: Xilonen, goddess of young corn

To the Aztecs, the planting, maturing and harvesting of maize was synonymous to birth, maturity and death. The Aztecs believed that on death the deceased’s soul would accompany the sun. The seeds were planted ie birth, the corn matured as did a person. At harvest the corn was picked and consumed, or kept as seed corn for the next year’s planting. Such harvesting could equate to death, where the individual ceased to exist as did the corn, but the individual went on to a new life as did the seed corn.
But for all the drama that surrounded the mythology of maize, the practicalities of eating the stuff were paramount. Its preparation was quite a complex procedure. The maize kernels had to be stripped from the cobs and dried. The dried kernels were then soaked in a mixture of water and ground limestone, a process known as nixtamalization (after the Nahuatl word for lime soaked maize, nixtamal). This process softened the maize making it much easier to eat. It also fortified the maize by adding proteins and vitamins, making the maize much more nutritious, although it did nothing for people’s teeth! Once nixtamalized the maize kernels were kneaded into a dough. Only then was the maize ready for cooking and eating.

Pic 14: Preparing tortillas

By the sixteenth century the population of Tenochtitlan may have been over 200,000 people, much larger than any contemporary city in Europe and on par with the cities of China and the Middle East at the same time. Further it is estimated that the total population of the whole of the Valley of Mexico, that is the area immediately surrounding Lake Texcoco, may have been in the region of one million. How was sufficient maize produced to feed this population in the absence of any large rivers or irrigation works? The answer is chinampas. Chinampas were developed by earlier Mexican civilisations, there is evidence of chinampas agriculture in most ancient Mexican cultures including the Maya, but the Aztecs developed the system to perfection. The reason, because they lived on an island in the middle of the very shallow Lake Texcoco. This island was essentially a marsh and ideal for chinampas agriculture.

Pic 16: Working the Chinampas fields in Aztec times

In a good year, this chinampas system could produce three or even four harvests a year. It was this form of intensive farming, coupled, of course, with the brilliant productivity of the maize plant that enabled the Aztecs to support such a huge population in the Valley of Mexico. However it is clear that in the latter stages of the Aztec Empire many more types of food were becoming available, and it is not inconceivable that had the Conquest not occurred when it did, ancient Mexico’s great reliance on maize may have started to subside somewhat. What effect this would have had on Mexican culture is anyone’s guess, but the Conquest did occur when it did, and maize has retained its pre-eminence and its supernatural qualities in Mexican civilisation.

Pic 18: A chinampa field today