Abstract
THE Maize Survey has been established by the Institution in co-operation with the United States Department of Agriculture, officers from the Department being seconded for the purpose. The object of the survey is to investigate the origin of maize and to make a study of the maize agronomy of the Maya area. Although maize is the cereal which made possible the rise of pre-Columbian American civilization, its ancestry is problematical and it is not known certainly where and when it was brought under cultivation a question having an intimate bearing on the beginnings of higher New World culture, including that of the Maya. In reporting on the results of a preliminary survey, which lasted for about a month in the field, Messrs. R. A. Emerson and J. K. Kempton offer certain tentative conclusions, which will serve to throw some light on the density of the ancient population and the relative proportions of the urban and agricultural population. The cultivation of maize, as at present practised, is on the milpa system; that is, a plot, after being burned off, is cultivated for two years, when it is allowed to revert to forest conditions, taking about eight to ten years to become completely re-established and ready for burning off again. Consumption is at an average rate of 1 -6 Ib. per head per day, which gives an annual consumption by a family of two adults and three children requiring from three to four acres under cultivation. This is about the amount which the Indians now claim to cultivate. The milpa system is the only system possible in Yucatan, even with modern tools and transport, and may, therefore, be presumed to be that followed by the ancient Maya. There is no evidence that it might not be followed indefinitely. The region, as thus cultivated, is capable of supporting a population of fifty persons per square mile, with ten persons as non-agricultural urban inhabitants. Maize cultivation has now completely supplanted the cotton grown by the ancient Maya, and only a small quantity of tobacco is grown.
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The Maize Survey. Nature 138, 1090 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/1381090a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/1381090a0