Well, the plant from which maize derives, the teosinte, is wonderfully adaptable.

其实那种玉米进化而来的植物大刍草具有很奇妙的适应性。

If turning aurochs into cattle, wolves into dogs or teosinte into maize sounds like a sideshow compared with transforming the composition of the atmosphere, looting the oceans or destroying the rainforests, consider a few facts.

如果说，与改变大气成分、掠夺海洋或破坏雨林相比，把古代野牛变成家牛、把狼变成狗或者把墨西黍变成玉米这种事听起来无关紧要，请仔细思考几事实。

Which, in the case of teosinte's transformation into corn, was a major makeover.

比如大刍草转化为玉米，这是重大的改造。

An ear of teosinte originally yielded somewhere between 5 and 12 small kernels, each with a hard shell called a pericarp.

每墨西野玉米能产出 5 至 12 颗玉米粒，每颗玉米粒都有硬壳，称为“果皮”。

All the corn eaten today is derived from a tall grass called teosinte, which Indigenous people in what is now southern Mexico began selectively breeding about 9,000 years ago.

如今我们吃的所有玉米都源自种名为“墨西野玉米”的高大草本，现今墨西南部的土著人大约在 9000 年前已经开始选择性培育这种植物了。

Over the last millennia, our ancestors have pursued this in basic ways, for instance, by improving milk production from cows and making a wild grass called teosinte into edible corn.

在过去的千年里， 我们的祖先以基本的方式追求这目标，例如，通过提高奶牛的产奶量， 以及将种叫做大刍草的野生草变成可食用的玉米。

That contrast between the immediate virtues of wheat and barley and the difficulties posed by teosinte may have been a significant factor in the differing developments of New World and Eurasian human societies.

小麦和大麦的直接优点与黍带来的困难之间的对比可能是新世界和欧亚人社会不同发展的重要因素。

For teosinte to become a useful crop, it had to undergo drastic changes in its reproductive biology, to increase greatly its investment in seeds, and to lose those rock-like coverings of its seeds.

为了使黍成为种有用的作物，它的繁殖生物学必须经历巨大的变化，大大增加对种子的投资，并失去种子上那些岩石般的覆盖物。

Corn's probable ancestor, a wild plant known as teosinte, looks so different from corn in its seed and flower structures that even its role as ancestor has been hotly debated by botanists for a long time.

玉米的可能祖先是种被称为黍的野生植物，其种子和花的结构与玉米非常不同，甚至它作为祖先的角色长期以来直受到植物学家的激烈争论。