Many people only know food plants from supermarket displays, beautifully packaged and presented or already processed. In our “post-agrarian”, increasingly urbanized world, knowledge about food plants is no longer present, or only in rudimentary form. However, they have a very interesting and complex history and are an important part of people’s cultural traditions and heritage. Food plants have a significance in many cultures of the world that goes far beyond their purely economic use. They are an integral part of many ceremonies and religious acts as well as an expression of complex knowledge systems. Cultivated plants have been domesticated in various regions of the world. They came and still come to our tables from the most diverse regions of the world: but tomatoes did not originally come from Italy, potatoes not from Belgium, cocoa not from Switzerland, bananas not from Central America or sugar cane not from Cuba.
The transition from a hunter-gatherer existence to a productive economy, to farming, was the decisive turning point in human history, a process that is also described as the ‘Neolithic Revolution’. Sedentism led to the development of complex social and political structures, to the emergence of large permanent communities and advanced civilizations. The domestication of food plants occurred independently in many regions of the world. Whereas in the 1970s it was still believed that there were only three ‘primary centers’ of plant domestication worldwide (the Middle East, China and Mesoamerica) and three so-called ‘noncenters’ (Africa, Southeast Asia and South America, the status of North America was unclear at the time), today it is assumed that there were nine centers: the Middle East, China, Mesoamerica, the Andes/Amazon, the Sahel, tropical West Africa, Ethiopia, New Guinea and eastern North America.
Domestication is seen as an active selection process by humans that intervene in the genetics of plants in order to promote certain characteristics and suppress undesirable ones. For example, breeders were looking for types of grain in which the ripe grains did not fall out as in wild grasses, but remained firm until harvest, or bean pods that did not burst open after ripening. An important objective was to increase the yield as well as the adaptation to different locations (reduction of cultivation risk). Domestication should be considered as a process and not as a unique event. It is neither the result of a ‘prehistoric genius’ nor that of a lone ‘Eurka-type’. It is a long-lasting process that took place at different times, spaces and intensities, a selection process that has continued right up to the present day.
Highly complex indigenous knowledge systems can be identified. One can see the anchoring of food plants in cultic-religious life and a great appreciation of plants and the food produced from them. Quinoa was a sacred food for the Incas. In the Quechua language, quinoa is referred to as the ‘mother of cereals’, which emphatically describes the plant’s great appreciation. Yams (a tuber crop) is a staple food on the eastern Guinea coast (Africa). These cultures (Yoruba, Ibo, Ibibio, Ewe or Baule) are referred to as ‘yam civilizations’ due to the exceptional cultural and economic status of the tuber. The yams farmers of Ghana describe yams almost metaphorically as the “heavenly tuber” or “root of life”, which refers to the high status of this plant. Yams play a decisive role in the cultural and ritual life of the peoples of the Guinea zone. The ‘Festival of the New Yams’ is often the highlight of the year. There are yam priests who open the sowing and harvesting season. The priests bless the fields, pray that the yams will prosper and that all evil will stay away.
Almost forgotten is the knowledge of variety of food plants, an amazing diversity that once also characterized our agriculture. However, there is a dramatic decline in biodiversity. It is alarming that of the 10,000 different varieties of rice once cultivated in Southeast Asia, less than 10 percent are now cultivated. This also applies to wheat and other crops. And only 8 or 9 crops produce around 75% of humanity’s food today. This poses enormous risks to the world’s food supply and is also a loss of farming knowledge worldwide. Who knows in our post-agrarian societies that there are red, blue, white or speckled maize in a wide variety of cob sizes, and that blue, black, yolk-yellow or red potatoes are grown in a wide variety of shapes and sizes with different tastes? In Peru alone there are more than 5,000 different potato varieties. In the Andean highlands of Bolivia and Peru, indigenous farmers often grow a dozen or more potato varieties in their fields, which differ significantly in size, color, shape and taste: from fist-sized to hazelnut-sized, from white, yellow, dark purple to red. In 1995, a Peruvian-American research team found that peasant families in central Peru cultivated an average of 10.6 traditional varieties – each with its own name. In the Quechua and Aymará languages of the Central Andes, there are hundreds of names for the local potato varieties. These terms describe the shape, which ranges from oval, round, elongated, cylindrical to flattened, as well as the different colors of the skin and pulp.
In addition to the purely economic consideration that determines in our Western cultures the handling and relationship with food plants, in many indigenous cultures of the world they have a significance that goes far beyond their purely economic use. There is often a deep reverence for these plants. They were and are often regarded as sacred plants and treated accordingly. There are myths and legends about their origin. According to the traditional myths and stories, the food plants came to people in very different ways:
- as a gift from the gods, as a gift from ancestors to humans;
- as a gift from heaven, but also from the underworld;
- as part of a theft from heaven as well as from the underworld;
- plants were created by the death or killing of a god or a special person.
Food plants are thus an integral part of many ceremonies and part of complex religious rites and cultic acts. The flourishing of the cultivated plants and a rich harvest are at the centre of economic, social and religious life in almost all agricultural cultures. Thus, a large number of practiced ceremonies revolve around the growth and fertility of the plants, ideas that are transmitted to one’s own society. Cultivation and harvest are accompanied by cultic acts. Drink offerings and food offerings at the time of sowing and harvesting are intended to protect growth, ensure a bountiful harvest and honoring the deities (e.g. the potato-deity in the Andean region or maize-deities in Mesoamerica).
Certain food plants are considered and revered as sacred plants. At the same time, food plants are often associated with their own ethnic origin. Numerous complex myths and legends surround their origins and some plants even have a soul. The idea that plants have souls exists in West Africa for millet and in South East Asia for rice – the souls are extremely sensitive and need to be cared for otherwise they will stray from the plants and this means no harvest. For the Kurumba in Burkina Faso (West African Sahel region), millet cultivation ensures subsistence – ensures survival. They believe in a millet-soul that is hidden in the ground and protected by the souls of the ancestors who also dwell there. The ancestors have the power to place the soul in a field, only then does the millet thrive particularly well.
Maize (corn) is still of outstanding economic importance in Mesoamerica today. This goes hand in hand with the great reverence that the plant is held in many indigenous American cultures: in the past and the present. Maize, as a gift from the gods to mankind, is at the center of myths and ceremonies. The Maya refer to themselves as “maize people”. The book on the creation of man, the Popul Vuh of the Quiché Maya (Guatemala), reports on this. According to the traditions of the Tzotzil Maya (Chiapas, Mexico), the First Father and the First Mother once formed the first humans from maize dough. Previous attempts using clay and wood had failed. The clay man became wet and disintegrated into earth. The human made of wood lacked wisdom. Only the man kneaded from maize was a perfect being who had reason and could speak. Because there were white, gray, blue, yellow, red and black maize, people of different skin colors emerged.
The Hopi in Arizona successfully cultivate blue, yellow, white, almost black, gray, blue, speckled or red maize in a semi-arid area, which differ in their growth height, the size of the cobs and their taste. The blue maize, which played a central role in their arrival in this world, is the most iconic Hopi maize. This is why they also call themselves “the people of the short blue maize”. The Hopi’s special affection for maize is also expressed by the fact that they sing to the plant: “You sing to them because they are like people, they have their own lives and love it when you sing to them,” this is how Virgil Masayesva, an important member of the Hopi Tribe, put it.
When we think of rice, we primarily think of South East Asia and China, but rice was also domesticated in West Africa. Rice cultivation also dominated the subsistence and life worlds of the ethnic groups of western West Africa, so that the cultures are referred to as the “civilization du riz”. Despite the overwhelming competition from Asian rice, the more robust O. glaberrima varieties, which are adapted to the special ecological conditions, have survived in the Niger inland delta and in western Guinea. Although farmers also cultivate Asian rice, the red varieties (African rice) are preferred to the white varieties (Asian rice) due to what is described as their better taste. The Baga, Diola, Brames and Balante people practice a special form of rice cultivation on the coast of Senegal and Guinea-Bissau: they create seedbeds, build dikes in conjunction with complicated irrigation and drainage technology and desalinize the mangrove soils. For the Diola people in Senegal, rice is an indicator of the of the social system and the subject of countless conversations. Rice offerings are an indispensable part of all stages of life, such as birth and naming ceremonies, weddings and funerals. Serving rice generously to the guest is a matter of course.
Cultivated plants have a very interesting history and are an important part of people’s cultural traditions, which is clearly reflected in many myths, fairy tales and legends. According to a myth of the Sidamo (southern Ethiopia), a long time ago there was only grain in the sky and not on earth. A mouse climbed into the sky on a spider thread, where millet seeds were plentiful. The mouse secretly ate as much millet seed as it could. After it had climbed back down harmless, it made a contract with the humans: the mouse left the stolen grains to the humans, but expected them to take their fair share of the harvest. For this reason, to this day, the humans leave a small hole in the granaries for the mouse so that it can get its share.
Like many grains, quinoa once came to the people through a theft. This is what the Quechua and Aymará (Central Andes) myths tell us. Once upon a time, the inhabitants of the heavens celebrated a feast which the fox living on earth wanted to take part. The condor was to take him up to heaven. For this the fox offered him a fat mutton as a reward. However, the condor demanded another mutton, which the fox fulfilled. And so the fox ascended to heaven with the help of the condor. Once there, the fox went straight to the kitchen and stuffed himself with the best food and slept with all the girls. When the condor came looking for him to fly back to earth with him, he explained that he wanted to stay in heaven for a few more days. His plan was to descend again on a long rope he had woven himself. Before he descended, however, he devoured quinoa, which he had stolen from the sky dwellers. On his descent, he got into a fight with parrots. As the fox mocked the parrots, they hacked through the rope, causing him to fall to the ground. The quinoa seeds fell out of its belly and spread across the plateau, where the humans found them and did not hesitate to use them. It is said that the fox then turned into a weed that strongly resembled quinoa.
The importance of food plants is also reflected in art: the plants are praised in stories, poems and songs, ceramics were made in the form of plants (ancient Peru), effigies in gold and silver were made (including the quinoa and maize plant in the Golden Garden of the Inca rulers in Cuzco, Peru) or they are depicted in paintings and as sculptures. In the numerous depictions of the potato in the pictorial art of the cultures of ancient Peru, the potato eyes are an important element as a symbol of its germination and fertility. The potato’s eyes seem to give the picture a face with eyes and a mouth. Together with the often elongated, curved shape, which can be seen as a body, they give the potato an anthropomorphic appearance, which can also be seen in many ceramics. The outstanding importance of maize for the cultures of Mesoamerican and parts of South America is also shown in art. Depictions of the plant and personifications of maize can be found on stele, stone sculptures, ceramic vessels, wall paintings and goldsmith’s work. Early depictions of maize gods come from the Olmecs, the first advanced civilization in ancient America (1200-600 BC) and from the Maya since the Early Classical Period (250-600 AD), for example as a young man with a stylized maize plant on his head. Often the birth of the maize god Hun Nal Yeh is depicted sprouting from the earth. The polychrome ceramics of the Nazca culture of ancient Peru and the Pueblos in the southwest of the USA are painted with depictions of maize. Maize cobs made of clay, precious metal or stone were made in ancient America. Beans were a central element of the cultures of ancient Peru (including the Nazca, Paracá, Moche and Inca). Moche ceramics show realistic depictions of lima beans, anthropomorphic figures of bean-warriors and the so-called bean-race. The importance of cultivated plants and agricultural rites is illustrated by numerous Nazca ceramics painted with dancing people. Ceramic plates and bowls of the Nazca are painted with sprouting beans. They are interpreted as a symbol of awakening life. Textiles from the Paracas culture are artistically embroidered with bean depictions.
Since their domestication, cultivated plants have been spread across the continents, a development that was decisively accelerated by European expansion from the 15th century onwards. Numerous historical sources tell us about the encounter with the new, foreign, often astonishing plants and customs of the people of the ‘foreign worlds’. In 1505 Christopher Columbus encountered a Mayan trading canoe off the coast of what is now Honduras, carrying a “kind of almond”, according to the explorer. However, Columbus found the drink made from it “too spicy” and “disgusting bitter”. This was his first contact with cocoa. The earliest description of maize was in December 1494 in a small pamphlet by Nicolo Scillacio from Padua (Italy). In the 16th century maize found its way as “American grain” into the ornamental gardens of Spain and botanical gardens of northern Italy. Historical sources document the cultivation of maize in Andalusia from 1525. The fact that yellow-grained maize was known in Italy at the beginning of the 16th century is shown by depictions of numerous old and new world fruits (e.g. in the Villa Farnesina in Rome). From Spain, the grain reached southern Europe and the Middle East. It is remarkable that people in Western Europe had apparently forgotten its original origin and believed that maize had come from Asia Minor or the Middle East, which is reflected by the terms “Turkish grain” (in Italian “grano turco”), “blé de Turquie” (Turkish wheat) and “blé sarazin” (Saracen wheat) in 16th century France or “trigu moriscu” (Moorish wheat) in Sardinia.
Since since the time of discoverya truly global exchange of food plants took place, which brought new crops to people, but also marginalized and pushed back traditionally used ones (e.g. quinoa, amaranth or cañahua in Latin America, a development that only changed recently). Today, plants from all over the world enrich our kitchens. They are often an essential component of the so-called ‘national cuisines’, or can anyone imagine Italian cuisine without tomatoes from the New World?
The still existing great diversity of food plants as well as the extensive cultural and agricultural knowledge surrounding cultivated plants are an important part of the world cultural heritage of mankind that is particularly worthy of protection.
The content of this article is taken from the book: Blauer Mais und rote Kartoffel. Ein kleine Kulturgeschichte bekannten und weniger bekannter Kulturpflanzen. Published by Natur und Text, Rangsdorf, 2019. ISBN 978-3-942062-34-3. The main part of the book presents 42 food plants (from amaranth to sugar ear) and a further 25 lesser-known food plants (from achira to yam bean). The individual plant portraits are organized as follows: Domestication and distribution, botany, cultural history, art, cultivation, consumption, medicine and recipes. Examples of the use and importance of food plants in indigenous societies are illustrated in the plant portraits. Maps, illustrations and directories complete the text.
