Eat, Drink, and be Merry! Maize Domesticated to Make Alcohol?

Zea mays was manipulated by the prehistoric peoples of Mesoamerica to produce maize.  This occurred someitme between 10,000 and 7,500 B.P. (Piperno et al 2009:5023).  Often believed to have been domesticated as a food source, John Smalley and Michael Blake, in their article entitled Sweet Beginnings, provide a unique view for the domestication of maize.They cite Hugh H. Ilitis's view of maize domestication as resulting from the need or desire for the sugar found in the maize stalk rather than for it edible seeds (Smalley and Blake 2003:675).  Taking this one step further, Smalley and Blake surmise the stalk sugar, among other uses, was a key component in producing alcoholic beverages and that the importance of these beverages were key in the domestication of maize (Smalley and Blake 2003:675).

For evidence of the importance of sugar in the diet and for the production of alcohol, Smalley and Blake refer to Mintz's article, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1985).  Solomon Katz and Mary Voigt's article, Beer and Bread (1986), looks at doemstication of wheat and barley in the prehistoric Near East and believe the main push behind the domestication of wild cereals also was for the production of alcoholic beverages (Katz and Voigt 1986:27).

We most often tend to look at fully domesticated maize and see its importance as a food resource as the reason for domestication.  Very seldom do we look to its other uses or characteristics as an important vehicle for domestication.  Smalley and Blake's premise of an alternate reason for maize domestication is quite simple.

Hunter-gatherers in Archaic Mesoamerica harvested zea for the sweetness in the stalk and chewed it to obtain the sweet middle (maize quids have been found in a number of Tehuacan cave sites) (Smalley and Blake 2003:682).  Perhaps over time it was found that large amounts of seet juice could be obtained through mashing the stalks and fermenting the juice as may have been done with other plant juices.  Archaic Mesoamericans may have tended stands of zea and increased their yield by planting it in other favorable areas.  Because these people were highly mobile, they could take zea seeds with them, planting zea in areas it did not occur naturally while manipulating and selecting for the characteristics that produced the sweetest juice (Smalley and Blake 2003:678-679).

Zea was chosen to domesticate over other plants that produced a sweet juice because it grew and matured quickly, was able to be harvested more than once a year and its yield could be expanded through expansion of growing areas.  Other plants were slow to grow and mature and difficult to cultivate (Smalley and Blake 2003:679).  Because cultivation is labor and time intensive and would have taken manpower away from obtaining other resources, zea would have been seen as a worthwhile cultivar.

Ethnographies from the New and Old World indicate alcoholic beverages were inportant at secular and nonsecular occasions.  Benjamin Franklin touted the fermented juice of the corn stalk and maize stalk beer is still made at harvest time by the Tarahumara (Smalley and Blake 2003:680).  As well, these beverages were probably incorporated into prehistoric religious and ritual occasions (Katz and Voigt 1986:27).

This novel view sees maize as a domesticate for a reason other than as a food crop.  Maize's importance under this model was as a necessary component for an alcoholic beverage.


Katz, Solomon H. and Mary M. Voigt
1986 Bread and Beer. Expidition 28(2):23-34

Piperno, Dolores R., Anthony J. Ranere, Irene Holst, Jose Iriart, and Ruth Dickau
2009 Starch Grain and Phytolith Evidence for Early Ninth Millenium B.P.: Maize
from the Central Balsas River Valley, Mexico. Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences 106(13):5019-5024.

Smalley, John and Michael Blake
2003 Sweet Beginnings: Stalk Sugar and the Domestication of Maize.
Current Anthropology 44(5):675-703