ABSTRACT
Anyone observing maize planting societies in Mesoamerica notices the importance of maize to the people who plant it. One ethnographer suggests that among the Yucatec Maya a man's identity is defined by his milpa and that the focus of all male and most female conversation is the milpa. The linguistic and iconographic evidence for the importance of maize to the indigenous inhabitants of south-eastern Mesoamerica and their predecessors is almost overwhelming. One observer says that Quich Maya do not plant maize to live, but rather they live to plant maize. Although this is a matter of perspective, it is a perspective shared by many regarding Mesoamerican subsistence maize farmers. It is worth remembering that the Maya borrowed from the Mixe-Zoqueans, both in word and script, as we turn our attention toward words related to maize. The maize plant and its ears are depicted in many places and in several ways in Maya images accompanying the glyphic script.
