Ana Lucía

When Christopher Columbus reached the Americas, he hoped the land would be rich with gold, silver and precious spices, but perhaps the New World’s greatest treasure was its bounty of native food crops cultivated for millennia by Indigenous Americans. As much as three-fifths of the world’s agricultural crops originated in the Americas. Without the Columbian Exchange, there would be no tomatoes for Italian food, no hot chile peppers for Indian cuisine, and no dietary staples like potatoes, squash, beans or corn. “A lot of the domestication and breeding that resulted in today’s major food crops, the important initial work was done by Indigenous people,” says Jules Janick, an emeritus professor of horticulture at Purdue University. “That was their contribution to world agriculture.” While Indigenous diets and foodways were deeply impacted by European settlement, Indigenous American foods also changed the world. When Spanish arrived in Antilles, they described a millet-like grain popular among the island natives, “little more than a palm in length, ending in a point… The grains are about the form and size of peas… When ground they are whiter than snow. This kind of grain is called maiz.” The crop we know as corn was domesticated from wild teosinte grass as far back as 8000 years ago in Mesoamerica. The maize grown in the Americas (Zea mays) wasn’t eaten fresh like sweet corn, but was allowed to dry on the stalk and then ground into flour for tortillas, corn breads and corn mush. From its origins in central Mexico, knowledge of maize production spread to all corners of North and South America. Maize cultivation was an anchor for nomadic tribes and supported the growth of massive Mesoamerican city-states and empires like the Olmecs, Maya, Aztec and Inca. The need to continuously improve the corn harvest led to agricultural innovations like terraced mountainside fields in Peru and floating island gardens called chinampas in the shallow lake of Tenochtitlan, Aztec capital. The earliest Native Americans to cultivate corn were the Pueblo people of the American southwest, whose culture was transformed by the arrival of corn in 1200 BC. By 1000 AD, corn was a staple crop that sustained tribes like Creek, Cherokee and Iroquois. Maize seeds traveled back to Europe in 1494 and maize cultivation spread with the expansion of Spanish empire, making it all the way to Philippines and China by 1550s. The ideal companion crop for maize was the nitrogen-fixing legume known as the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) or dry bean. Beans provided nitrogen-rich soil for maize and the corn stalks provided natural supports for the bean plant’s climbing vines. But more importantly, says Janick, a diet based on beans and maize is rich in essential proteins that neither food can provide on its own. “Maize alone is not a perfect food,” says Janick. “It’s missing some amino acids, particularly lysine, which is found in beans. Beans are deficient in other amino acids, cysteine and methionine, which are found in maize. So when you eat beans on a corn tortilla, which was the basis of Aztec and Maya diets, you have a complete protein food that fuels empires.” Another game-changing legume of the New World was the peanut, which originated in Brazil and made its way to Africa through the Portuguese slave trade. Pumpkins, gourds and other hard-skinned winter squashes (Cucurbita pepo, C. maxima and C. moschata) were part of the famous “three sisters” planting strategy practiced by Native Americans alongside beans and maize. Winter squash takes a long time to mature and the plant’s broad-leafed vines extend in all directions, providing a helpful ground cover that traps moisture and suppresses weeds for corn and beans. Gourds and squash were prized by Indigenous Americans for their nutrient-rich flesh, their protein-packed seeds and their sturdy shells, which were dried and used as containers and water jugs. #archaeohistories