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Most histories of the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the New World, after reporting on Columbus establishing contact, focus on Cortez and Pizarro and their conquest of the Aztecs and Incas. Chief among the accounts are those involving the Conquistadoes and gold. The new colonies brought emense quantities of gold and silver and helped make Spain the most powerful country in the world. In the long run, however, it may have been the humble potato that was the most significant item brought back to Europe. Farmers could harvest much larger uantities of potatos per acre than any other crop. This meant that European countries could support much larger populations than ever before. The cultivation of the potato resulted in a population explosion, a key factor in the industrial revolution.
South America broke all the rules of civilization. There was no great river valley. Civilization began in northern Peru along the coast--Norte Chico (Caral). It is not clear how people first arrived in the area. It was probably by some kind of water craft moving down the coast. This is virtually impossible to know because any available evidence has disappeared into the ocean over time. There are are also detectable Amazonian influences. The coast of northern Peru was and still is a a near desert area, although small rivers flow down from the Sierra. Agriculture developed occurred not from grains, but apparently to grow cotton. his was a fiber needed to procure nets used to harvest the bountiful marine resources created by coastal upwelling. (The Peruvian anchovy continues to be the world' most abundant fishery.) There was food agricultural, but the main crop was not a grain. Farmers irrigated fields to grown squash, beans, and a range of other crops including tomatoes and avocados. Maize would eventually reach South America, but not was not nearly as important as in Meso-America, although chicha (corn beer) became important throughout he Andes. Civilization spread from Norte Chico into the Sierra (Andes) and it was here that the potato was developed, a process that began before the arrival of civilization. It all began with a wild plant that was bitter to eat. (The potato is part of the nightshade family.) From this wild plant an amazing variety of potatoes were developed--there are over 4,000 varieties of cultivated pottoes. Potatoes could be grown along the coast with irrigation. But it is in the sierra highlands that potato farming began and thrived.
The potato isa robust and hardy planttht can be grown in areas where most other crops will not thrive. Potatoes were grown at elevations above 10,000 feet. The Aymara Indians would developed over 500 types of potatoes. The area around Lake Titicaca and the surrounding plateau seems to be the epicenter for the potato. The origin of modern potatoes can be traced back to a hybridization event between wild tomato-like plants and potato relatives approximately 9 million years ago. This event allowed the development of the tuber, which is the underground storage organ that make the potato such a valuable crop. There is some debate on the issue, but Solanum bukasovii seems to be the wild potato from which modern potato agriculture is based. Austors have mentioned nearly 200 species of wild potatoes, depending on how you count. Modern researches using genetic analysis has reduced the count to about 100 true species. 【Spooner】 Most are too bitter and unsafe to consume, but are important to breedes to mintain disease resistance. Their occurances is concentrated onn the Titicaca Plateau. The earliest people in southern South America appear to have been eating wild potatoes at plascs ch as Monte Verde in modern Chile.. The potato was domesticated between 8000-5000 BC. The earliest definitive archaeological evidence of potato remains dates to 2500 BC, found at the coastal site of Ancón in central Peru. The Inca were late comers, but no other civilization mastered the potato like the Inca. By this time maize was also farmed, but it was the potato that was the base of the Inca and other Andean civilization diets. Potatoes are a nutritiou andhalyhy food. Potastoes not only provide carbohydrates, they areamaingnutitional bumcles, good sources of vitminc B and C along with calium, iron, phophorus, potassium, and amino acids. Maize on ythe other hand has nutritional missues. While maize is the most efficient converter of solar energy into carbohydrates, the potato produces more food per acre than any other crop. This essentially means that Amer-Indian farmers were the most successful bio-engineers of any people. The potato can alo be stored for relatively long periods-- a great advantage to ancient proples. . The potato was unknown in Europe and Asia until introduced by the Spanish after the conquest of the Inca Empire (16th century).
The Inca until the early 15th century AD were but one of a large number of tribes situated in the Andes and narrow coastal plain from Chile north to Colombia. The tribes shared many common cultural cahracteristoics. The Inca were possessed with a messianic creed which taught that they were destined to dominate the world. They proceeded to conquer and assimilate neighboring tribes in southern Peru around Lake Titicaca. The Inca had a genius for public administration, enineering, as well as military strategy. One of their mostal notable inovations was the construction of a road network allowing the rapid movement of armies. Eventually this network streached the length of South America from cebtral Chile to southern Colombia--over 2,500 miles. The most important Inca ruler was Pachacuti (He Who Shakes the Earth) who regined from 1438-1471 and helped create the administrative structure needed for a great empire. The Incan Empire was operate on a system of state socialism. The Empire's output was the property of the Emperor or Inca and he distributed the food and clothing that was produced among his subjects as he saw fit. To the Inca, the gods resided in their native Andean mountains. The Inca placated the gods with offerings of corn, chica, meat, and occasioinally human sacrifices.
Most histories of the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the New World, after reporting on Columbus establishing contact, focus on Cortez and Pizarro and their
conquest of the Aztecs and Incas. Chief among the accounts are those involving the Conquistadoes and gold. The new colonies brought emense quantities of gold
and silver and helped make Spain the most powerful country in the world. In the long run, however, it may have been the humble potato that wss the most significant
item brought back to Europe. While the Spanish were after gold, but it was the potato that was to change Europe even more than the treasure ships laden with gold and silver. The population of Europe was still quite small at the time of the Spanish conquest of the Inca in Peru during the mid-16th century. The Spanish Conquistador Pedro Cieza de Leon in his �Chronicle of Peru� is the first European known to describe the potato.
No one knows when potatos were first brough to Europe and planted. Potatos despite their importance as a shipboard food that could prevent scurvy was not immediately adopted by European farmers. Spanish farmers appear to have begun planting them by the 1570s. Potato cultivation next spread to the Low Countries, then a possession of the Spanish Crown, and Switzerland. They were introduced to Germany in the 1620s. The nutritional value of the potato became widely accepted. Frederick the Great of Prussian ruler ordered his people to plant and eat them as a valuable food source. The potato by time of the Seven Years War (1756-1763) was a basic staple of the Prussian diet. By the time of the French Revolution (1789), the potato was becoming popular in France.
The potato was not only central to the life of the Andean Native American cultures, but it also findamentally transformed European civilization. The potato within in a century had become an essential part of the European diet. Not only was it nutritious, but it was more reliable than wheat which did not grow well in damp climates. European farmers found that they could harvest a larger yield of potatoes than any other crop per acre. The result was that farmers could feed a much greater population than ever before. The cultivation of the potato resulted in a population explosion. The population increase in Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries was in large measure due to the potato. The potato helped generate significant population increases throughout Europe, but not evenly. French demographics were especially affected. France had been the most populous and as a result most powerful country in Europe, in part because it had a climate conducive to wheat farming. The arival of the potato in Europe increased the aricultural productivity of northern Europe, including Britain, Germany, and Russia. The changing dmeogrphics affected the blance pf power in Europe.
The potato was one of the many contributors to the European Industrial Revolution. The potato which the Spanish introduced to Europe from South America substantially increased the caloric output from European farms. European farmers had been ficused on wheat ahnd other grains. These were crops from the Middle East. They were idealy suited for Mediteranean climates, but less so for the colder climate of northern Europe. Not only were griwing cionditions not idea, but grain farming in the north was more subject to crop failures which until modern times could mean famine and starvation. The potato was differejnt, it was ideally suited to the climnate of northern Europe. As European agriculture became more productive, a smaller number of farmers could support the increasingly large numbers of industrial workers in Europe's rapidly expanding cities.
The Irish Potato Famine began with a blight of the potato crop. The Irish had come to depend on the potato as a mainstay of their diet. No other crop produced so much food per acre of land. The blight was devestating and spread with amazing speed. Within a year a bountiful crop was reduced to rotting fields. Vast expanses of Irish fields were ruined by black rot. It would have not been as bad if the Irish diet had been more diverse, but the poor Irish peasantry survived on the potato harvest. Potato crops accross Europe failed, but nowhere in Europe was the poopulation so dependant on the potato. Not only was the potato gone, but the crop failure caused the price of other food crops to soar, placing substitute foods beyond the purchasing power of the destitute Irish peasantry. The Irish peasantry were tennantv farmers who eked out a subsistaence existance with the potato not only found their food stocks roting, but were unable to pay their rents. Soon their British and Irish Protestant landlords were evicting them from their homes. Some of the Irish peasants out of desperation attempted to eat the rotting potatos. Whole villages were devestated by cholera and typhus. Parish priests desperately tried to tend to their congregtions and feed the starving. Inn some cases the dead went unburried. Many were burried without caskets. English relief efforts wre inadequated and even these wereec abandoned in the midst of the famine. Work houses because of inadequate nutrition and unsanitary conditions were death traps. The Irish famine has been seen by many as the greatest humanitarian disasaster of the 19th centuy. This was in part because so many died and others forced emmigrate. Over 1 million are believed to have actually sucumbed to statvation and disease. But most tragic of all was that it was preventable. Throuhout the Famine, Irish, and English landowners were exporting food. One author points out that a quarter of the peers in the House of Lords owned land in Ireland and failed to act. [Wilson] As the 19th century moved on, independence became a possibility, but not an inevitability. The central development in the 19th century was the Irish Potalo Famine (1845-50). The reforms of the 19th century could have succeeded in integrating Ireland within the rest of the United Kingdom. This did not occur and the central reason was the Famine. The potato famine and more importantly the British reaction to the Famine resulted in a Holocaust of horendous proportions. After the Famine, Irish independence was inevitable.
Spooner, Danid M. et. al. "Wild potatoes (Solanum section Petota) of North and Central America," Systematic Botany Monographs (January 2004) Vol. 68, 209p.
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