134 INSTITUTE OF SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY—PUBLICATION NO. 4 
APPENDIX 2 
MAJOR CULTIVATED PLANTS 
NATIVE TO THE AMERICAS 
OR EARLY INTRODUCED aes 
CHIEF CROPS IN GUATEMALA SUBSISTENCE 
AGRICULTURE 
MAIZE OR INDIAN CORN 
Maize (maiz, Zea mays) until recently was thought by 
most authorities to have been a derivative of some sort, 
probably hybrid, of teosinte (Euchlaena mexicana). Since 
this “god grass” of the Aztecs has been found as a weed 
in Mexico, and as a true species growing wild only in sev- 
eral limited areas in Guatemala,™ the Mexico—Guatemala 
region was regarded as the original home of teosinte and 
maize. Vavilov reached this conclusion on the basis of varietal 
diversity in conjunction with the occurrence of wild rela- 
tives. He was strongly influenced by the presence of teosinte 
solely in Mexico and Central America, so much so, in fact, 
that, as Mangelsdorf and Reeves point out (1939, p. 243), 
he was apparently inclined to overlook the greater variety of 
maize types in Peru than in Central America. These latter 
authors have shown that teosinte is a relatively late and 
natural hybrid of Tripsacum and Zea which originated in 
some part of Central America (ibid. pp. 203 ff.). They 
conclude that maize in its original form was a wild pod corn 
(the homozygous, true-breeding type), having, as Weather- 
wax (1918) had earlier suggested, and Montgomery before 
him (1906), a common progenitor with Tripsacum, and 
native possibly to extratropical South American Lowlands 
(Mangelsdorf and Reeves, 1939, pp. 231, 248 ff.), whence it 
spread to the Andean region and was improved by domesti- 
cation and selection, reaching Central America and Mexico 
relatively late, as a small-seeded flint (ibid., p. 254). This 
latter idea is evidently based, at least in part, upon the Rus- 
sian findings here of the greatest diversity of flint corn in 
the world (Bukasov, 1930, p. 33, English summary, p. 472). 
My collections of over 500 ears from nearly 50 localities 
representing most of western, and much of southern and 
eastern Guatemala, have shown a maximum variety and 
abundance of flinty corn, especially in the Highlands, with 
much less flour and dent corn there (pl. 30, d). The latter 
grows mainly at lower altitudes. 
Bukasoy (1930, pp. 472-473, English summary) concluded 
that dent corn originated in Mexico, flint in Central America, 
and flour corn in Colombia. Mexico and Central America 
188 The question of origins of American cultivated plants has been 
considered in a critical and stimulating paper by Carl Sauer (1936). 
19 Kempton and Popenoe, 1937. These men determined the distribu- 
tion of teosinte in the Jutiapa~Lake Retana region of eastern Guatemala 
and discovered remarkably heavy growths of the plant in the vicinity 
around San Antonio Huista, western Guatemala. I found it also, in 
1940, near San Lufs Jilotepeque (eastern Guatemala) and as far out 
from the San Antonio Huista center as Santa Ana Huista and Santiago 
Petatan. Jusepcezuk, of the Vavilov school of Russian plant geographers, 
ventured to call Guatemala the ‘‘cradle of maize’? (on the basis of horn- 
like, teosintelike endosperm in Guatemala Zea mays indurata). 
181 Vavilov, 1931. For a good summary of the Russian method, see 
Bruman, 1936. 
were found by the Russians to be the center of diversity of 
three out of the four main corn endosperm types (apparently 
considering Zea mays everta, or popcorn, as one of these, in 
addition to the three named above), and hence, according 
to them, “the primary center of maize origin.” 
One of my collections, made in 1940 for Harvard Uni- 
versity, was studied cytologically by Mangelsdorf and Cam- 
eron. Their publication, “Western Guatemala a Secondary 
Center of Origin of Cultivated Maize Varieties,” presents 
their principal conclusions derived to date from this study. 
Plants from 200 ears of the collection were grown in 
Connecticut. With regard to chromosome knobs, they found 
in an area approximately the size of New York City, in 
corn from the Department of Huehuetenango, “almost all 
the knob positions known in maize from any part of the 
world... .” They concluded that “in an area less than 
half the size of the State of Iowa, are found probably 
more distinct types of corn than occur in the entire United 
States,” and that western Guatemala, though “not the area 
where maize culture originated or the focus from which 
it spread to all ‘parts of the Americas,” is “the center 
from which the majority of maize varieties now cultivated 
in Central America, North America, the lowlands of South 
America and the West Indies, have been derived” (Mangels- 
dorf and Cameron, 1942, p. 224). 
BEANS 
Beans (Phaseolus spp.), frijol in Mexico and Central 
America, and according to Bukasov (1930, p. 505) usually 
frisol in Colombia, also showed greatest diversity, in the 
Russian collection, from Mexico and Guatemala, with Co- 
lombia second, and Peru-Bolivia third.% The large geo- 
graphic group north of the Isthmus of Panama appeared 
to be quite distinct from those of South America. Of the 
four species of Phaseolus the Russians found tepary (P. 
acutifolius) to have the most limited distribution. They col- 
lected it only along the Pacific coast of Chiapas, to the 
“frontier of Guatemala, where it probably also occurs.” 
In 1936 I collected this bean at Santo Domingo Suchitepequez, 
in Guatemala, 40 miles from the Mexican border, substan- 
tiating their supposition and extending the record of its oc- 
192 Results of Ivanov’s research showed 246 Mexican varieties of 
“common and multiflorus bean” (2/3 uncolored) and only 77 Peruvian, 
all colors equally divided (Bukasov, 1930, ch. 12). 
193 Bukasov, 1930, p. 505. The English summary of this work erro- 
neously states further that the Russians actually found Phaseolus 
acutifolius in Guatemala; “to its area known up to the present time 
and limited in the south by the state of Guadalajara must be added 
the region of Chiapas and Guatemala established by us” (ibid., p. 511). 
Yet in the Russian text, they state specifically their single discovery: 
“Two rare species were discovered here side by side with Phaseolus 
vulgaris, P. multiflorus[ =P. coccineus] and P. lunatus: on a small 
strip of Chiapas (Tapachula, Suchiapa) was P. acutifolius, and only in 
one place namely in Santa Isabel (fig. 47), Canavalia ensiformis” (for 
discussion of C. ensiformis, see p. 147). 
