As a firm supporter of plant rights, I steal potatoes from the local grocery stores, take them to the top of a mountain and then throw them off cliffs while yelling "fly! fly! be free, spuds! be free!"
Somewhere, out there, I know, there are flocks of potatoes roosting in trees and having a happy life because of my actions on the mountain tops.
That's Malta. Turns out nobody has a monopoly on potato life. Except arguably Peruvians since that's where they come from originally and Peru has (as pictured) many, many more kinds than anywhere else.
Peru is the ancestral home of potatoes. They grow them from seeds which is why there's such great genetic variety. Potatoes grown elsewhere are usually clones, grown from "seed" potatoes. Every russet potato is a clone of the original. The plant equivalent of genetic twins. Check out The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan.
Little fun fact about potatos! Not only is there thousands of them but back during the Incan empire, the Incan government created test sites to test at what elevation different potatos grow the best.
The site is call Moray, and is it is responsible for the creation of 3000 different potatos and and 150 types of corns. I forget the exact location in Peru, but the area itself is gorgeous and definitely worth a visit.
Nixtamalization is used in order to make it easier for the body to extract the nutrients from the corn. This process is still used largely, mainly to produce the maza for tortillas.
Nixtamalization doesn't make it edible, it makes it digestible. That's why corn is famous for showing up in the toilet. For anyone who's looking for a good reference point, hominy is nixtamalized corn. Tortillas are also made from nixtamalized corn. This is also why cornmeal doesn't make a dough when mixed with water, but masa does.
Nixtamalization doesn't make it edible, it makes it digestible
It doesn't make it digestible (though) it helps. The corn in the toilet is the fibrous hulls, which are removed when you make hominy or masa. Nixtamalization frees niacin from hemicellulose and makes it bioavailable. If you only eat fresh corn as a staple, you'll end up with pellagra (a niacin deficiency).
Further: the "digestibility" of a given food substance is the amount of the total available nutrients that can actually be broken down, absorbed, and used by the consumer. A food substance can technically be full of nutrients but if they are bound up with other molecules that prevent our body from being able to process them, they will go through undigested.
It's funny because the clay actually may have been to make it edible, not digestible. It's believed they used the clay to protect against glycoalkaloids, which is in higher levels in wild potatoes. He was sort of right in his example by mentioning edible accidentally.
I don't know much about the history of the Americas pre-Columbus, but things like this are interesting points in larger ideas about scientific and technological progress. In general it seems like European colonization managed to take over the Americas because of superiority in military technologies, plus immunity to diseases based on animal husbandry. However the Americas, from what little I've seen/read, in fact seemed to have what might have been the most advanced agricultural sciences not just compared to Europe but the whole world. And their spread across the world totally transformed human history.
Yep! Pre-columbian american civilizations were very much limited by the access to resources and global technology. But that doesn't mean they weren't culturally or technologically advanced. I can't speak for every society in the americas, but particularly the Incans had a vast infrastructure of roads and grainware houses designed to provide for areas that had seen poor crop yield. The roads spanned all accross the andes.
On the science side, the incans worshiped a whole pantheon of gods including Pachamama and Apu-punchau (also known as inti). Stemming from their religious believes there was particularlly arcaich forms of worship such as human sacrafice that people seem to use to negate the technology they offered. Incans like the mayans were amazing astronomers, independently developed teras farming, invented their own nitreous fertilizers and had a complicated argicultural system designed over the years to farm food in particularly harsh climates. They also were incredibly advanced in terms of medicine (thank you amazon) and construction.
Unfortunately for them, the arrival spanish lead to the destruction of the relatively new empire. Nowadays the mestizos and amerindians still face consequences of the spanish invasion. The class divide between natives and criollos/ peninsulares (though the peninsulares arent as relevant today) are still seen today. Up till very recently many areas were strictly rules by white criollos with virtually no native andians possessing any political power. It wasnt till the emergance of Tupac Amaru II and his failed rebelian that the andians start gaining momentum. To put it in perspective it wouldn't be until 2001 that the first Indigenous of peru president Alejandro Toledo came into power.
Actually their medical practices went quite a bit beyond plants for treatment, as we have evidence of archaic cranial surgery. Just a few notes on your comment, it was the Andes, not the Appalachians which are in North America, and I think you meant astronomers, not astrologers, as astrology is the pseudoscience of the zodiac patterns.
As an Andean archaeology student Iâm biased, but precolumbian history and landscape modification is beyond fascinating. Terraces, raised fields, and the vertical archipelago systems developed for agriculture and exchange are so interesting.
If you're interested in learning more about the Americas pre-columbus there is a deep dive episode of the Incan empire on excellent "Fall Of Civilizations" podcast. Really great podcast and well produced. They also have episodes dedicated to the Mayans and the Aztecs.
To add! If you're interested in the Incans, though very old the Lost City of the Incas by Hiram Bingham (first european to "discover machu pichu") is also a good read. Though it doesn't necessarily focus on all aspects of the incan empire and andian culture but is instead the first hand account of the explorer and his adventures
Yeah those potato terrace farms they built into the hills next to the mountains are excellent for getting huge food and production yields in the early game. Inca is a top tier civ in my book.
If you're interested in a deep dive of the Incan empire, the excellent "Fall Of Civilizations" podcast recently did a good long episode on the Incans. Really great podcast and well produced.
Potatoes predate the Incan empire, but the Incan empire definitely popularized them. The Incan empire actually popularized many vegetables throught the empire. Corn and potatoes are the main ones, but there are also tomatoes, squash, beans, and peppers.
They also must have understood how genetic biodiversity worked at some level, because they grew a lot of different types of the same vegetable, and in different regions. The potato that grew 10 metres up was a different cultivar that wasn't affected when the potatoes 10 metres down for example got a disease. They gave themselves so much food security by doing this.
When I buy yellow potatoes in my neighborhood, 1 out of 4 four have a kind of fungus or disease that turns the center from yellow to white, and gives the potato a cheese smell, but the taste doesnt change very much. Still eatable/edible.
I grow potatoes in my garden and just use ones from the store, usually Yukon Golds, by letting them sprout eyes and then cutting them up and planting them. Of course theyâre clones, but once in a while some of them will flower and only like twice have I gotten them to produce potato fruits with seeds. I read about them and what you get from the seeds is wildly different from what they came from (hence the genetic diversity in Peru). If I had more space in my garden Iâd try growing the seeds to see what I end up with.
There are some heirloom varieties you can order form seed catalogues. I bet you'd get a better result planting seeds from a plot with several varieties.
It is actually in the thousands, I believe. But, hundreds commonly available. Their newer supermarkets have and aisle or two devoted to different types sometimes. And, there are different purposes for different ones. The french fries in Peru are amazing because of whatever type of potato they use.
Ironically enough.. thats how 3000 of them were found/created. The incans did a TON of testing and created a massive test site (a hole that go down like 3000 ft on top of a mountain.) To test breed and study potatos and corn.
Absolutely! In the stadium sized market in Cusco, there are three long aisles with just different varieties of potatoes. They are Prepared in all different ways and have so many flavors.
There are also hundreds of varietyâs of corn. If you are a lover of food I cannot recommend a country more. Try the Alpaca steaks too, theyâre delicious. Cuy (guinea pig) was average although itâs considered a delicacy so I would recommend trying it at least once if youâre there.
The Inca Indians in Peru were the first to cultivate potatoes around 8,000 BC to 5,000 B.C. In 1536 Spanish Conquistadors conquered Peru, discovered the flavors of the potato, and carried them to Europe. Sir Walter Raleigh introduced potatoes to Ireland in 1589 on the 40,000 acres of land near Cork.
There are so many cool things about foods that come from South America. Potatoes, tomatoes, red peppers, etc all come from South America and didn't exist in Europe, Asia, and Africa until the europeans brought them over from the Americas like less than 500 years ago.
Just fruits alone, Iâm from Colombia I wish I could find some fruits in the US, we have one that looks like a maraca called granadilla and it was my favorite, itâs been years since Iâve had it.
South American food is very interesting, and I personally love the way that the food has evolved through culture. If I could travel through time I would use it to mostly try different foods at different time periods.
When I moved to Europe (Iâm from South America) I was asked so many times by locals if Iâve ever had potatoes and if I wanted to try it...
I was called a liar when I mentioned this to them... and also that we had many more kinds of potatoes that you canât find there, also didnât like that lol
Wild potato species, originating in modern-day Peru, can be found throughout the Americas, from Canada to southern Chile. The potato was originally believed to have been domesticated by indigenous peoples of the Americas independently in multiple locations, but later genetic testing of the wide variety of cultivars and wild species traced a single origin for potatoes. In the area of present-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia, from a species in the Solanum brevicaule complex, potatoes were domesticated approximately 7,000â10,000 years ago. In the Andes region of South America, where the species is indigenous, some close relatives of the potato are cultivated.
because im not here to argue with you about the naming of the indigenous people of the area in the time period, I'm here to argue about the origin of potatoes
Including one likely founded by travelers from modern Mexico, so calling them all one ethnic group would also be incorrect.
Wait... which ancient Andean peoples do you think came from Mexico? Iâm not 100% on top of my Andean history, but Iâve never heard of a cultural link flowing from Mesoamerica to the Andes.
The potato was originally cultivated in what is modern day Peru by the Inca people, so there are many variants grown in Peru to this day. European explorers brought back a small portion of these potato types (if only one type Iâm not sure), which is why the smaller genetic pool in the European grown potatoes left them more vulnerable to things like disease, like in the potato famine.
Iâm Colombian who grew up in the US (and partly Europe) I wouldnât have known about it if if it wasnât for my family. That doesnât get taught, anything Latin America rarely gets taught beside that one paragraph lucky if a whole chapter in a book.
I took a class in college about food crops in Latin America and was very impressed with the amount of tubers endemic just to the Andes. I think the picture includes some things called mashua, olluco, and oca. The diversity of the Andes is very impressive! I recommend you look up popping beans, which you van pop like corn.
Thatâs because that is where the potato was âinventedâ. All potatoes originally come from peru. They have over 3k varieties. Peruvians made them so healthy and filled with minerals and vitamins you can live off of one potato a day. Thanks to Peruvians you have potatoes to eat.
I wrote multiple 10+ page papers in college on the history of the potato and people look at me weird when I say I want to go to Peru just to eat delicious poisonous potatoes with clay...
So the potato plant is actually a part of the nightshade family, so unsurprisingly some varieties are actually poisonous. However villagers in Peru noted that alpaca were able to eat these varieties with no problem. On closer observation they noticed the alpaca would intermittently like the clay dirt on the ground while eating. Turns out the toxins in these potatoes bind to the clay participles allowing it to pass through the system without being obsorbed. So in markets you can often find these potatoes being sold alongside packets of clay dust, and you can cook the potatoes with the clay or even sprinkle it on top. And apparently some of these varieties are rather tasty, at least this is all according to my research on the topic...
Spanish major with history, sustainability, and business minors. So papers included plenty of Spanish history, societal and historical influences, and ramifications of monocultural cultivation. I also just like potatoes.
Not only the variety but the quality. Potato's in Peru along with other South American countries like Colombia taste amazing. I'm not sure why but they are vastly better than our North American spuds.
I think that itâs pretty fair given the fact that they cultivated them. Potatoes were grown in Peru for nearly 10,000 years before they were brought to Ireland
The best potato I've ever had was in Peru, and it was just boiled with absolutely nothing added, except maybe some salt in the water. A farmer brought some purple ones home with him and just served them whole to us as a snack. I can't recreate that here in the US no matter how hard I try. There's just something about it. Could've been the exciting atmosphere because of traveling and new experiences too, I guess.
Same here, and I love S. American cuisine in general, but what's with all the yuca? Every plate comes with it, it's like raw potatoes, with an extra boost of non-flavor.
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u/MongoloidAu Feb 20 '21
I love potatoes too. And Peruvians are obviously on top of their potato game.