Food & agriculture · c. 7,000 BCE

Domesticated maize

A scrubby Mexican grass called teosinte was bred into maize, the Americas' great grain.

Maize was domesticated from teosinte in the Balsas River valley of southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago. Its cobs grew from a few centimetres to a staple that fed the Maya, Aztecs and Incas, and today it is the world's most produced grain.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 1

Agriculture 9500 BCE

What it led to 2

Columbian exchange 1492
Hybrid corn 1926

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

World population over a million years Latest: 6.27k million people (2000) Source: DeLong 1998, table 'Total World Population' (Kremer series); Kremer 1993, Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990, QJE 108(3)

Cereal yield Latest: 4.21 t/ha (2024) Source: Our World in Data