Maize was not only an integral part of the Mesoamerican diet, but Mayan culture even worshipped a Corn God and believed that humans were originally shaped from corn. For the Mayans, corn was life, and it was the Mayans to have first started turning corn into tortillas.

The food itself, a thin flatbread made from dried and finely ground corn, can be traced back many thousands of years to people of the Sierra Madre Mountains in Mexico. It is thought that tortillas were first developed around 10,000 B.C.E., which coincides with the time corn was first domesticated in the area.

In the Aztecs' native language they called it “tlaxcalli”, but once the Spanish discovered it, they called them tortillas and it quickly spread across the world.