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Digital
History>eXplorations>Columbus & the
Columbian Exchange>The
Columbian Exchange>Origins of Vegetables
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This
map shows the sites of domestication for a number of crops.
Places where crops were initially domesticated are called centres
of origin
This
image is from the USDA. |
Sources
for more information:
| Origins of Selected Plants |
| VEGETABLES: |
| beans |
"Faba beans probably originated in the Near
East in late Neolithic times. By the Bronze Age they had spread
at least to Northern Italy and have been found in several lakeside
dwellings in Switzerland. The earliest findings in Britain date
back to the Iron Age at Glastonbury. They were widely cultivated
in ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome."
from the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA)
http://www.icarda.cgiar.org/Publications/Cook/Faba%20Bean/FabaBean.html |
| corn
(maize) |
"It is usually accepted that maize
was growing in Meosamerica by betweent 8000 and 5000 B.C. Reliable
archaeolgical evidence of domesticated maize dates from as long
ago as 3600 B.C. in what is now central Mexico, and it is thought
that domestication of the crop first took place--doubtless at
a much earlier date--in this general area. To the south, a separate
domestication of maize may have been accomplished at about the
same time by South American Indians in the central Andes, or
the crop may simply have traveled to that area from its point
of origin."
from the Cambridge World History of Food by Kenneth
F. Kiple & Kriemhild Conee Ornelas, Cambridge University
Press:Cambridge, Volume Two, 2000, p. 1805-6. |
| manioc |
"A University of Colorado at Boulder team excavating
an ancient Maya village in El Salvador buried by a volcanic eruption
1,400 years ago has discovered an ancient field of manioc, the
first evidence for cultivation of the calorie-rich tuber in the
New World...Archaeologists had suspected ancient Mayans had cultivated
and consumed manioc for its high-energy value, he said. Also
known as cassava, manioc provides one of the highest yields of
food energy per acre per day of any cultivated crop in the world."
from a University of Colorado Boulder press release, Aug. 20,
2007
http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2007/305.html |
| melons |
"The culture of the watermelon goes back
to prehistoric times. It was grown by the ancient Egyptians,
as revealed by pictures that survive to the present. Old names
in Arabic, Berber, Sanskrit, Spanish, and Sardinian are all unrelated,
indicating great antiquity of culture in lands about the Mediterranean
and east as far as India. The long and general culture of the
watermelon from North Africa to middle Asia led to the view that
it was of Asiatic origin, although it had never been found wild
in Asia or elsewhere. Finally, however, about a hundred years
ago, the great missionary-explorer, David Livingstone, settled
the question of its origin. He found large tracts in central
Africa literally covered with watermelons growing truly wild."
from "Our Vegetable Travelers" by Victor R. Boswell, National
Geographic Magazine, 1949, Volume 96(2). |
| peanuts |
"The archaeological records supports its [the
peanut's] cultivation between 300 and 2500 BC in Peruvian desert
oases...
The cultivated peanut was likely first domesticated in the valleys
of the Paraguay and Prarana rivers in the Chaco region of South
America. The plant is believed to have been originally
domesticated by predecessors of the Arawak- speaking peoples
who now live in its homeland.
The first written account of the crop is found with the Spanish
entry into Hispanola in 1502, where the Arawak cultivated
under the name of mani. Records from Brazil
around 1550 showed the crop was known there with the name
mandubi. Early Spanish and Portuguese accounts record the
presence of crop through of the West Indies and South America."
from World Georgraphy of the Peanut, Dept. of Anthropology,
University of Georgia
http://www.lanra.uga.edu/peanut/knowledgebase/ |
| peppers |
"Fragments of different types of peppers have
been found in Peruvian ruins believed to be more than 2,000 years
old. Fruits of the pepper are unmistakably illustrated in the
elaborate embroidery of an Indian garment unearthed near the
coast of Peru and believed to date back to about the first century.
The Olmecs, Toltecs, and Aztecs also are known to have cultivated
and used peppers extensively. In the first half of the 16th century,
voyagers to the Americas encountered many forms of peppers, not
only in the West Indies
but in Central America, Mexico, Peru, Chile-wherever they touched
the American Tropics. By the beginning of the 17th century
virtually every form known today had been found, all being
grown by the Indians."
from "Our Vegetable Travelers" by Victor
R. Boswell, National
Geographic Magazine, 1949, Volume 96(2). |
| potatoes |
"The potato originated in the South American Andes,
but its heartland of wild genetic diversity reaches from Venezuela,
Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile across
the Pampa and Chaco regions of Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay,
and southern Brazil and northward into Central America, Mexico,
and the southwestern United States. There are more than 200 wild
potato species in this wide habitat that extends from high cold
mountains and plateaus into warmer valleys and subtropical forests
and drier semiarid intermontane basins and coastal valleys."
from the Cambridge World History of Food, section written by
Ellen Messer
http://www.cambridge.org/us/books/kiple/potatoes.htm |
| pumpkins |
"Pumpkins have been grown in
North America for five thousand years. They are indigenous to
the western hemisphere. In 1584, after French explorer Jacques
Cartier explored the St. Lawrence region of North America, he
reported finding "gros
melons." The name was translated into English as "pompions," which
has since evolved into the modern "pumpkin."
from the History Channel's History of Halloween
http://www.history.com/minisite.do?content_type=mini_home&mini_id=1076 |
| radishes |
"China is believed to be the country of origin,
since truly wild forms have been found there. Middle Asia appears
to be a secondary center where many different forms developed
after the plant was introduced from China in prehistoric times.
Ancient Egyptian records show that radishes were a common food
in Egypt
before the Pyramids were built. Radishes were so highly valued
by the ancient Greeks that small replicas of them were made in
gold; beets were shown
in silver and turnips in lead. The Greeks of the third century
B.C. wrote of the radishes of their day, and an ancient Greek
physician wrote a whole book about the plant. The Romans, at
the beginning of the Christian Era, also were familiar with the
radish. Their writers described various kinds,
including the small, mild, early, round, and long forms (like
ours) as well as the large later types weighing several pounds
each."
from "Our Vegetable Travelers" by Victor
R. Boswell, National
Geographic Magazine, 1949, Volume 96(2). |
| squash |
"The earliest records of human use of edible cucurbits
[squash family] has come from Mexico; caches of seeds of squashes
have been found
from habitations older than 9000 years, and certainly by 5000
B.C. In the New World, squashes and pumpkins were used as a major
food crop (planted) by native peoples and became a major part
of the diet of the Pilgrims, apparently a prominent food at the
first Thanksgiving feast and all subsequent ones.
from "Plants and Civilization" by Professor Arthur C. Gibson,
UCLA
http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/economicbotany/Cucurbita/index.html |
| sweet
potatoes |
"It is though that Ipomoea batatas [sweet potatoes]
originated from an unremarkable trailing climber (vine) on the
mainland,
probably in Central America...Sweet potato was already an important
crop on Pacific islands when Europeans landed on the islands:
Easter Island (Roggeveen,
1722), New Zealand (Cook, 1769), and the Hawaiian Islands (Cook,
1778). Sweet potato, known as kumara, was a staple in the diet
of the Maoris of New Zealand; interestingly, the name kumar
is used for this plant in Peru! Rongo ma-Tane, a Maori god,
protects this plant; a buried tuber is powerful enough to cause
enemy to go mad and run away.
from "Plants and Civilization" by
Professor Arthur C. Gibson, UCLA
http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/economicbotany/Ipomoea/index.html |
| tomatoes |
"Although it is unclear where tomatoes may have
been first domesticated, the two main possibilities are Peru
and Mexico. The wild forms may have originated in either area,
but it was the indigenous peoples of Mexico that first cultivated
them. In fact, the common name tomato comes from tomatl, the
word for this plant in the Nahuatl language of Mexico. In his
1544 herbal, Matthiolus documents the existence of tomatoes in
Italy and also reports that Italians ate them.
Vernon Quinn proposes that the Spanish explorers brought it
back to Spain from Mexico and that a Moor brought it to Tangiers
and, from there, an Italian brought it to Italy where it was
called Moor's apple, pomo dei mori, and a name with a similar
sound, poma amoris, but a different meaning: love apple. Similarly,
the French referred to it as love apple, pomme d'amour."
from Ethnobotanical Leaflets International Web Journal
http://www.siu.edu/~ebl/leaflets/tomato.htm |
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