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ON SOME NUTRITIOUS PLANTS’ MOBILITY.
Theodore J. Drizis MD, PhD ME, PhD HI.
Kalamata – Greece.
E – Mail: theodorosdrizis@outlook.com
It is common fact, food is the nature’s product, vegetative or animal,
which after human elaboration is become appropriate to be taken from the
man for his survival. There are species of food, which are cultivated and
developed in a certain part of the earth and other species in other parts. It
depends of the conditions of the part in respect of the weather and the
soil, also of the preferences and traditions of the men in this certain part
of the earth. Besides, it is common knowledge, the man presented a
mobility on his habitation on the earth from area to area in every era
temporary or permanent where in this last case is the immigration, in
order to his survival and to his prosperity. By this mobility, the man knew
new species of food and simultaneously transmitted these species to the
whole mankind. This transmission concerns any region, country,
continent and hemisphere. This work presents the indicative mobility of
some plants.
The material is from the relative bibliography to the respective species of
food especially to some plants.
The method is the textual criticism of this material.
Beginning with the potato, potato (solanum tuberosum) is an annual plant
in the nightshade family (Solanaceae), grown for its starchy edible
tubers1. It is native to the America, where wild potato species are found
from the southern United States to Southern Chile2. The archaeological
results of Martin – Farias (1976) and Ugent et al. (1981, 1982) in the
materials excavated by Moseley (1975) and Engels, verified by the phase
– contrast light microscopy and the scanning – electron microscopy
(SEM), add weight to the botanical evidence, so that an origin of potato
domestication in the high (Central) Andes of Northern Bolivia and
Central Peru, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, included the central coast of
Peru and its coastal desert, some time before 10000bp appears positive3.
On its spreading, at first it is said the potato was introduced in Virginia
and South Carolina in the middle of 16th c. AD/CE4. Thence was exported
“Geographic distribuon of wild potato species” !
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in Europe (1565)5 mainly in Spain and Ireland initially as a stockbreeding
product but forwarded by Spaniards in 1588 to botanist Carolus Clusius
(Charles de l’ Ecluse, Netherlands, 1526 – 1609 AD/CE) for analysis in
order to be excluded any toxicity, who transmitted it in Germany and
thence was spreading in Switzerland and Eastern France6. In England was
introduced in 1585 and in Belgium in16207. In Paris, by the pharmacist
Antoine – Augustin Parmentier it was domesticated at Sablons’ plain in
17878, meanwhile according others authors the Paris Faculty of Medicine
declared potatoes edible in 1772 due largely to Parmentier’s efforts9. In
the end of 17th c. the potato was introduced in Russia by Tsar/Emperor
Peter the Great, by asking Holland for sending potatoes to Russia10. In
1705 the potatoes were transported again in USA11. The further
transmission became by European (including Russian) mariners to
territories and ports throughout the world, especially their colonies12. The
potato was slow to be adopted by European and colonial farmers13.
On the rice, it is an important food crop with regard to human nutrition
and caloric intake14; it has been documented in the history books as a
source of food as far back as 2500 B.C./BCE. Beginning in China and the
surrounding areas, its cultivation spread throughout Sri Lanka, and India.
It was then passed onto Greece and areas of the Mediterranean. Rice
spread throughout Southern Europe and to some of North Africa. From
Europe rice was brought to the New World. From Portugal it was brought
into Brazil and from Spain to Central and South America 15. The current
scientific consensus, based on archaeological and linguistic evidence, is
that the specie Oryza sativa rice was first domesticated in the Yangtze
River basin in China 13,500 to 8.200 years ago16. The specie Oryza
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glaberrima was independently domesticated in Africa 3,000 to 3,500
years ago17.
On the maize, this cereal grain and staple food, used as human food, as
livestock feed, as raw material in industry18 and known as corn in North
American and Australian English, has origin from New World as it is
demonstrated and witnessed so from its nomenclature as well as from
scientific sources. In respect of the nomenclature, it is a Spanish word
first show up as mahiz in 1500 in Columbus’s diary, come from the
indigenous Taino Arawakan language mahiz or mahís19. Maize is
preferred in formal, scientific and international usage as a common name
because it refers specifically to this one grain, unlike corn, which has a
complex variety of meanings that vary by context and geographic region20
In respect of scientific sources, the research presented plant fragments
dated to 4200 BC/BCE found in the Guilá Naquitz Cave in Oaxaca,
showed maize had already been domesticated from teosinte, a wild corn’s
progenitor and ancestor while it is mentioned maize was first
domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000
years ago21. Matsuoca et al. demonstrated the single domestication in
southern Mexico about 9,000 ago (bp) at the Mexican highlands before
spreading to the lowlands22. John Doebley published in 2004 a genetic
study that he identified maize native to the Balsas River valley in
Mexico’s southwestern highlands as teosinte most similar to modern
maize23. Archaeologist Dolores Piperno indicates also the Balsas River
Valley of south-central Mexico as the center of domestication24 and then
into lower Central America by 7600 BP [5600 BC], into the inter-Andean
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valleys of Colombia 7000 – 6000 BP [5000 – 4000 BC]25 meanwhile
evidence of cultivation in Peru has been found dating to about 6700 years
BP26. Additionally, archaeological remains of early maize ears found at
Guila Naquitz Cave in the Oaxaca Valley, date back roughly 6,250 years;
the oldest ears from caves found near Tehuacan, Puebla, 5,450 B.P.
Around 4,500 years ago (BP), maize began to spread to the north; it was
first cultivated in New Mexico and Arizona about 4,100 years ago (BP)27.
During the first millennium AD, maize cultivation spread more widely in
the areas north. In particular, the large-scale adoption of maize agriculture
and consumption in eastern North America took place about A.D.(CE)
90028. After the arrival of Europeans in 1492, Spanish settlers, and
explorers and traders carried it to Europe29. Maize was cultivated in Spain
just a few decades after Columbus’s voyages and then spread to Italy,
West Africa and elsewhere30.
Examining the cultivation of the above staple foods we can see this
cultivation there was in certain parts of the earth before the mobility of
these foods, parts which were defined and fixed, meanwhile this
cultivation after these foods’ mobility became possible and realizable in
many parts of the world by the same manner. Matter for questioning and
discussion, in my opinion, is the fact that these plants were cultivated
only in certain parts of the earth before their transport, while the soil and
the atmospheric conditions permit their cultivation and their development
in other places of the world, too. I think this is a point which should be
clarified from the appropriate scientists as agriculturalists and biologists.
In conclusion, taking in consideration all the above we could denote the
nutritious plants’ cultivation there was not initially the same in all over
the world but others in one place others in other. Nevertheless, by their
mobility via the men they were cultivated in other places and became
staple food to mankind in all over the world.
Abstract. _By this work, they are presented historical aspects on the
movement of some plants on behalf of man and in behalf of man through
transfer from their native places to others in the world and of which the
fruit compose a nutritious food for the man.
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General References
Eric Ofgang, Who invented the hamburger? Biting into the messy history
of America’s iconic sandwich. Article on the Washington Post, May 28,
2021.
Pliny, Natural History. Translated by H. Rackham. Loeb Classical
Library, v. III. Harvard University Press 1997.
Arthur L. Herman, Viking Heart – How Scandinavians conquered the
world. Mariner Books, Boston (MA) – USA 2021.
Apicius, De Re Coquinaria. Translated by Joseph Dommers Vehling
(1936). On Lacus Curtius, uchicago.edu
The Roman Cookery Book: A Critical Translation of the Art of Cooking
by Apicius for Use in the Study and the Kitchen. Translation: Barbara
Flower and Elisabeth Resenbaum. London: Harrap, 1958. Latin and
English.
David R. Harris and Gordon C. Hillman, Foraging and farming, The
evolution of plant exploitation – Concepts and processes. Routledge
Taylor and Francis Group. Routledge Library Editions: Archaeology.
London and New York 2015.
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. Reprinted with
corrections 1981. Published by Longman Group Limited. Printed in Great
Britain at the Pitman Press, Bath.
The New Encyclopaedia (Micropaedia), 15th edition. Encyclopaedia
Britannica Inc.
Electronical Pages
www.en.wikipedia.org
www.penelope.uchicago.edu/
www.britannica.com/plant/potato/
www.santerre.baillet.org/communes/montdidier/
www.connexionfrance.com/article/
www.smithsonianmag.com/
www.jstor.org/