In its long association with man, maize has had a complicated career. It has been used by various peoples and in various ways. One might compare its whole history to a complex fabric, its warp the multitudinous varieties of this versatile crop, its woof the myriad uses to which Zea Mays has been put by the peoples who have grown it. In interpreting and understanding this history and in developing the broadest use of this world asset, one can never predict which of these various strands will be most useful in unravelling some particular problem. One finds ethnological curiosities leading to modern technological progress; for example, waxy maize, developed by Asiatic aborigines (Collins, 1909), became the clever solution to wartime shortages of industrial carbohydrates (Sprague and Jenkins, 1948). In reporting these rather unusual uses of maize in the South American highlands we would not venture to predict whether their greatest significance might be to an historian, a biochemist, an archaeologist, a plant breeder, or to some imaginative industrialist. Ancash is a small department including part of the Coast and Sierra of Peru north of Lima. It is largely drained by the Rio Santa, one of the largest rivers of the western slopes of the Peruvian Andes. Throughout most of its length the Santa is flanked on the west by the Cordillera Negra and on the east by the Cordillera Blanca, the latter completely dominating the scenery of Ancash with its chain of very high peaks and their glaciers and perpetual snowfields. Excepting its upper and lower extremities, the large trough between these two ranges is known as the Callejon de Huailas (sensu latut). The Santa varies in elevation in this region from 3,370 m. at Recuay to 2,150 m. at Villa Sucre (Weberbauer, 1945). Sugar cane and other tropical and subtropical crops are cultivated under irrigation in the lower reaches, maize and small grains in the upper part, the latter