Sunday, April 5, 2009 - Socorro NM
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Blue Mountain Sunrise, South Monticello Point, Elephant Butte Lake State Park, Elephant Butte NM, April 4, 2009
I'm on the move - headed northward toward Albuquerque to pick my friend Jane at the airport tomorrow. She's flying in for what is becoming her annual visit. It's great she can get away from Fairbanks for a few days and I get to share a bit of New Mexico with her before I head east for the summer.
Night camp
Wal-Mart Parking Lot in Socorro NM
Wal-Mart Supercenter in Socorro NM
Wal-Mart Supercenter Store #5492, 700 North 6Th Street, Socorro, NM 87801 - (575) 838-1415
- Good level parking
- Verizon cell phone signal- very good
- Verizon EVDO Broadband signal - very good
- Find other Wal-Marts in the area
- Check the weather here
Teosinte and the Improbability of Maize
The ancestors of wheat, rice, millet, and barley look like their domesticated descendants; because they are both edible and highly productive, one can easily imagine how the idea of planting them for food came up. Maize can't reproduce itself, because its kernals are securely wrapped in the husk, so Indians must have developed it from some other species. But there are no wild species that resemble maize. Its closest genetic relative is a mountain grass called teosinte that looks strikingly different - for one thing, it "ears" are smaller than baby corn served in Chinese restaurants. No one eats teosinte, because it produces too little grain to be worth harvesting. In creating modern maize from this unpromising plant, Indians performed a feat so improbable that archaeologists and biologists have argued for decades over how it was achieved. Coupled with squash, beans, and avocados, maize provided Mesoamerica with a balanced diet, one arguably more nutritious than its Middle Eastern or Asian equivalent.