And primitive peoples managed to breed corn from teosinte in a few hundred years -- roughly from 9,000 ya to 8,700 ya for the teosinte to modern maize forms.
I'm looking for sources on early 18th and 19th century maize farming and cultivars, haven't turned up any yet.
If you realise that all three major grains on which humans are overwhelmingly dependent, maize, rice, and wheat, did not exist only ~10,000 years ago, the power of simple selective breeding becomes apparent.
Look to dogs, horses, cattle, hogs, sheep, and poultry for similar trends in selective breeding over only a few thousand years, though in many cases a few centuries.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2010/05/25/science/25creature.html...
I'm looking for sources on early 18th and 19th century maize farming and cultivars, haven't turned up any yet.
If you realise that all three major grains on which humans are overwhelmingly dependent, maize, rice, and wheat, did not exist only ~10,000 years ago, the power of simple selective breeding becomes apparent.
Look to dogs, horses, cattle, hogs, sheep, and poultry for similar trends in selective breeding over only a few thousand years, though in many cases a few centuries.