>>> Chuck Grimes
This reminds me to mention the laws of inheritance which had to be understood or at least worked out in practice in order to breed different kinds of corn for different purposes.
^^^ CB:On this point, Meso-American archaelogists talk in terms of the Indigenous peoples of "Mexico" _inventing_ corn. In other words, they were botanists. They developed it out of an ancestor plant teosintle. That is probably in your origins article below.
^^^
So, another example of why materialism and science does not start only in Europe.
^^^^
During my bio-science tech job, I grew corn, collected the pollen and then fertilized the silks, harvested the ears, dried and collected, sorted and labeled the seeds and started all over to see what we got with our crosses. The key to getting this to work is timing---and (as noted above) timing is dependent on the kind and amount of light and moisture present at particular points of development. When everything is ready, you cover the silks with small empty sacks to keep female plants from being pollinated. Meanwhile you collect pollen from male plants which is released at the about the same time in other sacks tied over the male silk (the antlers). Here is an overview:
http://ohioline.osu.edu/agf-fact/0128.html
The point being that I can see how this kind of practical breeding knowledge leads to understanding how genetics works, without a theory of genetics, i.e. Mendal. Just as an imaginary sketch, for a theory of mythological genetics, I could see naming this kind of corn with some family name and that kind of corn with another family name (and giving both a pedigree, i.e ancestorial lineage), and then breeding the family's offspring and discovering what the children look and taste like, how it works as flour, etc, or can be popped or roasted, etc. Cull the next children into those who look, taste, and work well for whatever the use, and those that don't. You plant the ones you like and grind up and eat the rest. This selection process can be (but not always) easy since the children are all collected in nice handy corn cobs. You can see some individual kernels are different from others since in some varieties, the kernels are different colors---a color coding system made to order (blue-brown, red, tan, yellow, white, wrinkly, wavey, etc). These are usually referred to as Indian corn. Here's a nice photo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Corncobs.jpg
We were selecting for a variety called Lazy, because it grows on the ground like a ground cover---looks like giant crab grass. There are a lot of different kinds of corn.
Here's nice article on the whole business. Go to the bottom (origins):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maize
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