Somewhere in what is today Mexico, about 9,000 years ago, a group of people domesticated a local plant, possibly in the highlands,

possibly elsewhere but then shortly thereafter spread to the highlands, and that plant had

little starchy seed pods that humans could eat. Some research has suggested that this

happened many times throughout the region. This little plant, which is today called maize, was obviously awesome enough that a bunch of different groups of humans realized it might be beneficial to plant more of it near their settlements, rather than relying on naturally occurring plants to sustain them. And then, over time, they took good care of these plants and bred them for larger,

sweeter, more nutrition-rich seed pods, alongside other changes that were beneficial for those wishing

to continue using them as a food source.

More recent research, and this seems to be the dominant theory at the moment, suggests that this

cultivation happened in one area and then spread outward from that area.

Which makes sense as the trade networks through this region have always been pretty solid,

and the locals are renowned, even way back then, for their agricultural capabilities, building sophisticated irrigation infrastructure,

even in terrain, that seems unlikely to be able to sustain such things.

Whatever the specifics, archaeological evidence shows that maze, which is more commonly

called corn in English-speaking parts of the world, was cultivated

and nudged into a boggling array of shapes and sizes and colors and types, and became what's

called a staple food, basically a food that serves as the foundation for a group of people's diet

throughout the Americas.

When Europeans started showing up in the Americas, killing and plundering and enslaving everybody,

beginning at the tail end of the 15th century, they also adopted the consumption and cultivation

of maize.

There's some written evidence that they were hesitant about this at first, in part because their

Christian beliefs indicated that only bread made from wheat could transubstantiate into the body

of Christ for religious purposes, and in part because of their familiarity with wheat from

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