From Teosinte to Corn, But Where did Teosinte Come From?

The Mayan, Lencan, and Pipil peoples that now populate much of El Salvador, as well as Honduras and Guatemala, were born of corn. The gods are associated with corn, including both the diseased corn (pellegra), associated with Ixbalamque, and the perfect corn, treated with ash or lime water, associated with Hunapa. And the first Mayan people were made were of perfect corn dough (masa).

Scientists now know that corn was hybridized from Balsas teosinte grass in southwestern Mexico by 6700 BC. The Guatemalan teosinte found in the highlands of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, is similar but was not used at first to hybridize corn.

But where did teosinte come from? When did the very early hunter-gatherers of Mesoamerica first learn that they could eat teosinte? And was it as revered by those early people as much as corn was for the Mayans, Lencas, and Pipiles?

Among many Mesoamerican people teosinte is associated with birds and it is possible that the plethora of bird gods is a collective memory of early peoples learning from birds to eat the teosinte kernels. Certainly teosinte would have been an important food substance at least until about 3000 BC when corn hybridization would have improved to the point where growing corn would have begun to replace gathering wild teosinte. Early peoples ground up teosinte and made it into a drink. It continues to be used by people in parts of Mexico and Guatemala as both a food product and to hybridize with corn to bring out certain qualities - such as resistance to disease.

One of the most surprising things about teosinte, is that nobody today calls it 'teosinte'. Anthropologists have not found any indigenous or Spanish speaking communities that call teosinte grass, 'teosinte'. Among the names used by the Chorti Mayas, for example, are ixim ka, wild corn. So where did the name come from? To help answer that, I have mapped the ten occurrences of the place name 'teosinte' or 'teocinte', 'teocintli'. [Click to enlarge]

Most of the occurrences of Teosinte are located in the Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador tri-border region. There is also one southeast of the area on this map in Nicaragua, Cerro Teosintal. Surprisingly, there are two place names of 'teosinte' many hundreds of miles away in Jalisco, just south of Puerto Vallarta. Many assume that the name teosinte comes from the nahua, teocintli. However, there is only one place with that name in Mexico. In addition, very few place names in the areas surrounding the eight Central American places are of nahua origin (pipil in the case of El Salvador).

This indicates that the name probably originated somewhere in the Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador region and that perhaps this was the first place that the very early indigenous, in the 12,000 to 7000 BC period, began gathering teosinte kernels. As such, teosinte must come from the proto Mesoamerican language that gave rise to the Mayan, Lencan, Chibchan, and other language groups. What is remarkable is that these place names still exist. That would mean that these places have been remembered for perhaps 10,000 years of continuous human settlement as sources of sustenance. So how did the name teosinte get to Puerto Vallarta? More on that another time.

I have been to the two Teosinte villages in central and eastern Chalatenango. In eastern Chalatenango, Teosinte is a village outside of Arcatao, in an area that was Lenca at the time of the Spanish occupation. There is a lot of wild grass growing in the hills above Arcatao, like La Cañada.

In central Chalatenango, Teosinte is a village northeast of Tejutla, in an area that was Chorti Maya in 1525 AD. It is a beautiful village. Teosinte, like Arcatao, is an organized community, part of CRIPDES, and a sister city to Arlington, Massachusetts. In 1991 I took a hike up into the hills above Teosinte and found wide expanses of wild grass. It may not have been 'teosinte' but for 10,000 years this has likely been a source of sustenance for the peoples of El Salvador. Considering its location so close to the Matamaras cave along the Sumpul River, this area should be investigated for signs of very early human activity, like the Corinto cave in eastern El Salvador.

Comments

[Abel Macias]

very nice piece on the origin of the word Teocintli. I'm sure the peoples of MesoAmerica borrowed much of their knowledge from their early ancestors who may have originated in what is now Centro America. The prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor may also be missing the story of the Quetzal, which bridges the two continents of north and south. thank you for this work on an important subject.