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

其实那种玉米进化而来植物大刍草具有很奇妙适应性。

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，野牛变成家牛、狼变成狗或者墨西哥类蜀黍变成玉米这种事听起来无关紧要，请仔细思考几个事实。

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

比如大刍草转化为玉米，这是一个重大改造。

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

每一个墨西哥野玉米能产出 5 至 12 颗玉米粒，每一颗玉米粒都有一个硬壳，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.

如今我所有玉米都源自一种名为“墨西哥野玉米”高大草本，现今墨西哥南部土著人大约在 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.

在过去一千年里， 我祖先以基本方式追求这一目标，例如，通过提高奶牛产奶量， 以及将一种叫做大刍草野生草变成可食用玉米。

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.

小麦和大麦直接优点与类蜀黍带来困难之间对比可能是新世界和欧亚人类社会不同发展一个重要因素。

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.

为了使类蜀黍成为一种有用作物，它繁殖生物学必须经历巨大变化，大大增加对种子投资，并失去种子上那些岩石般覆盖物。

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.

玉米可能祖先是一种被称为类蜀黍野生植物，其种子和花结构与玉米非常不同，甚至它作为祖先角色长期以来一直受到植物学家激烈争论。