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Potatoes: South America's Gift to the World | Ancient Americas | YouTubeToText
YouTube Transcript: Potatoes: South America's Gift to the World
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The potato, a remarkably versatile and nutritious tuber, has a rich history of domestication and global spread, profoundly impacting human civilization, population growth, and culinary traditions worldwide.
i love potatoes
truly few other vegetables can match it
for its flavor and versatility it's a
terrific tuber that you can cook in so
many imaginative ways you can fry them
you can slice them you can dice them you
can bake them you can boil them you can
mash them you can even stick them in a
stew and that doesn't even touch on the
crazy varieties of fries dumplings
breads pancakes chips pastas pies
this one weird soda and who knows what
else you can make with them i mean heck
just look at this list look how many
countries are on here
ugh i'm getting hungry just talking
about this as wonderful as the potato
tastes i assure you that the story of
how the potato was domesticated
cultivated and exported around the world
is just as wonderful
so grab a bag of your favorite potato
chips and sit back because today we're
what is a potato
the potato you cook and eat is the root
of the plant solanum tuberosum the
solanum family actually includes
tomatoes eggplants bell peppers petunias
tobacco but ironically not sweet
potatoes those come from an entirely
different family the potato though is a
small wonder to behold
our mundane interactions with the potato
often prevent us from appreciating its
finer qualities first and foremost the
potato is very rugged and hearty they
can thrive in a wide variety of
environments and even environments that
are often poorly suited to agriculture
even at elevations over four thousand
meters they can grow with no issues
so it shouldn't be surprising that they
are grown from scandinavia to the amazon
to the arabian desert the potato doesn't
care it just adapts
on top of that potatoes are very easy to
store and can last a long time in
storage compared to other vegetables
second potatoes are surprisingly
nutritious they're a good source of
vitamin c as well as b complex vitamins
with some extra calcium iron phosphorus
and potassium to boot
potatoes are also rich in essential
amino acids on top of that they're rich
in carbohydrates although this is where
potatoes get a bad wrap for the starchy
quality of those carbs starches are
actually a fine source of energy but the
problem is that we often cook starches
in fats and oils which compromise the
otherwise nutritious potato with extra
fats and oils that we don't need that's
what makes your french fries so
unhealthy and delicious
that said the potato is an exceptional
nutritional bundle so much so that it's
actually possible to survive and stay
healthy on a diet of just potatoes and
little else which shouldn't be news for
anyone who saw the martian or read the
book that guy conquered mars with some
ingenuity elbow grease and a sack of
potatoes but seriously studies have
actually borne this out so if you ever
feel like prepping for the apocalypse
maybe invest in a bunch of taters
now that we can appreciate what a potato
is let's take a look at the origins of
the potato the potato has over 150
species of wild relatives so tracking
down the exact ancestor of the potato on
your plate is no easy thing
these wild relatives can actually be
found all over the americas from the
american southwest to central america
but their greatest concentration is
found in south america
thanks to their tenacious adaptability
these wild species have colonized the
rainforests the arid pacific coast the
andean highlands and the southern plains
these wild varieties were known about
and consumed by people long before
anyone ever gave farming a thought the
best example of this comes from the
archaeological site of monteverde in chile
chile
those who have watched my now outdated
video on the first american should be
familiar with this site because of the
role that it played in overturning the
clovis first theory what i didn't
mention in that video is that the
archaeological site is actually located
in an anaerobic wetland while that
detail may sound inconsequential it's
important because anaerobic environments
lack the oxygen that would normally
allow microbes to consume organic
material which means that they can
preserve material that would otherwise
be lost to the elements now we don't
have time to detail all that was found
at the site but if you're interested
it's pretty easy to look up what i want
to highlight is that among the many
plant remains at the site were wild
potatoes that were almost certainly
being eaten by the inhabitants
monteverde securely dates to over 12 000
years ago so humans and potatoes have a
very old relationship such wild potatoes
have a few key differences from the
potatoes that we eat today
most visible is that they're smaller but
more important is their bitter flavor
which comes from the glycoalkaloids that
are produced by the plant these toxic
compounds can make you pretty sick and
they're actually a defense mechanism
designed to discourage humans and
animals from eating them
interestingly potatoes belong to the
same family as nightshade which are
notorious for producing other deadly
types of alkaloids as well
high levels of glycoalkaloids can impact
your nervous system and digestive system
and can even be lethal
even today poisonings can still happen
despite the fact that domesticated
varieties have been bred to produce
negligible amounts of glycoalkaloids
before all that though those toxins
would have been way worse with wild
potatoes this actually presents an
interesting paradox potatoes would have
been an unpredictable and potentially
dangerous source of food people using
these wild varieties would have had to
have carefully weeded out bitter
varieties to avoid getting poisoned
at best it would have been a secondary
resource and yet those ancient foragers
were familiar enough with it that it did
eventually get domesticated although
it's possible that combing through all
those wild varieties to get non-bitter
varieties may have given them a head
start who knows
to see this domestication in action we
need to go to the highlands of southern
peru where the ancestor of the modern
potato was chilling on the andean altiplano
altiplano
the altaplano is a pretty inhospitable
environment to most flora but the wild
potatoes that inhabit the region are
perfectly adapted to it their starchy
roots allow them to survive long dry
periods that would doom most other plants
plants
to the perspective of ancient
hunter-gatherers these wild potatoes
would have constituted a welcome source
of ripe easy to harvest food in an
otherwise rough landscape
even more appealing would have been the
fact that these could have been
harvested and stored for long periods of time
time
this is in stark contrast to other
tubers that andean peoples were foraging
which will wither and rot much sooner
after they've been removed from the
ground they just don't store as well as
a potato
in using the potato early foragers also
learned how to deal with those
unpleasant glycoalkaloids
still practiced among some imara
communities to this day
glycoalkaloids can be neutralized by
mixing a special clay with the bitter
potatoes these clays have elements that
will bind to the glycoalkaloids and
prevent them from being digested
if anyone's curious about how they
figure that out geophagy as the practice
is known is sometimes practiced by
animals and perhaps people learned it
from observing them
smart move even if it's a far cry from
ketchup or sour cream
another practice that they developed was
to leave a tuber in the ground for every
few that were removed this practice
would ensure that the plant would
survive regrow and produce more potatoes
this basically would have made them
farmers of a sort well cultivators is
probably the more fitting term
these cultivators began to select and
replant potatoes with shorter stolens
larger tubers of different colors and
shapes and most importantly reduced
levels of those bitter glycoalkaloids
now which species or species is they
cultivated and eventually domesticated
has had its fair share of controversy
due to the number of wild potato species
there was a lot of speculation about
whether the modern potato was produced
from a single species or multiple
cross-bred species however in the past
20 years genetics have helped scientists
determine that the potato only had one
wild ancestor
that honor goes to the solanum bukasovia
which is a part of the larger solanum
brevocale complex
that species and its relatives still
exist and thrive in south america and
it's not uncommon for them to grow as
weeds in south american potato farms and plots
plots
it's worth pointing out that the potato
was not the only tuber or root crop that
the people of the andes domesticated
other root vegetables like aracacha
yacon oka and mashua and many others got
this treatment as well
once complete the people of the andes
were left with a hearty root vegetable
that was delicious nutritious and could
be stored for long periods of time and
they ran with it actually i shouldn't
say that the process was completed it
never stopped and it continues to the
present day today there are over 5 000
types of potatoes in every size and
color imaginable that's what i call success
success
unfortunately that successes had its
drawbacks in successfully domesticating
the potato we've unfortunately disarmed
it of many of its natural defenses which
leaves it particularly vulnerable to
diseases and pests
modern farmers take great care to
protect their crops and usually spray
them several times in one season
in fact over two billion dollars gets
annually spent on protecting potato
crops and that price tag is only going up
up
in fact without the care of humans the
domesticated potato would probably die
out domestication has made both the
potato and people mutually dependent on
each other potatoes need us just as much
as we need them
the earliest evidence that we have for
the domestic potato comes from the choca
district in peru
in a canyon potato remains were
discovered that were claimed to be 10
000 years old but that date is a bit
suspect because it was based on their
position in the deposit rather than on
carbon dating so it's a very fragile
date and it could very easily be incorrect
incorrect
much more secure dates have been
documented at the site of hiskaramoko
near lake titicaca where potato starch
was recovered from tools that date back
as far as 3400 bce by 2000 bce we have
actual dried out potatoes in
archaeological context appearing not in
the highlands but all the way in the
cosmo valley down on the peruvian coast
what's very interesting about this is
that these potatoes were most likely
acquired from people in the highlands
because without irrigation there's no
way that these potatoes could have been
grown on the coast and currently no
irrigation has been discovered at the site
site
and that makes sense the potato was much
more vital to life in the highlands than
on the coast
of the people in the highlands no one
was enjoying the potato quite as much as
the people at lake titicaca
this is where the tiwanaku culture
flourished in the first millennium ce
during the heyday of tiwanaku people
were taking the potatoes capabilities
for long-term storage and pushing it to
its utmost limits in an ingenious way
allow me to introduce you to chunyo
for stateside viewers who have never
heard of this potatoey delight it's
freeze-dried potatoes this is created
when potatoes are left out in the
intense summer sun of the altiplano to
dry out and then allowed to freeze
overnight in cold temperatures this is
done over many days which allows the
potatoes to dry out before they're taken
and stamped underfoot by whole
communities to get any remaining
moisture out of the potato before
finally removing the peels
the potatoes may be cleaned to make
white chun-yo or left as they are to
make black chun-yo
regardless the chuno that's left is
almost completely free of toxins and can
last for months or even years with
minimal storage effort
in fact chunyo remains have been found
at tiwanaku that date back over 2000
years ago no clue on how appetizing it
still was after all that time but that's
pretty impressive
cunyo can also be ground into a flower
that can be used to thicken soups and
stews to this day chunyo still features
prominently in a lot of peruvian and
bolivian dishes
fun fact that same process can also be
done on llama or alpaca meat which
produces a dried out meat called charki
which is where we get our word for jerky
while researching this episode i
remembered that there's a peruvian
restaurant in my city so i figured hey
let's grab some lunch sample some cunyo
and call it research so i did and juno
what it's delicious highly recommend
giving it a try
tiwanaku made great use of the potato
and if you've watched my previous two
episodes on tiwanaku you'll be familiar
with their use of raised field
agriculture to grow large amounts of
crops very successfully
with such agricultural surpluses they
could move potatoes in chino across
their territory and abroad making it a
terrific export
other highland civilizations such as the
wari and even the mowiska way up in
colombia also employed the potato as a
staple crop
however highland cultures were not alone
in making use of the potato coastal
cultures had an appetite for it as well
as one example the moche were huge fans
of the potato and it even features in
their ceramics
of particular note are these unsettling
potato human hybrids like much of moche
art the significance of these works is
not fully understood though there's a
lot of speculation out there
until recently it was assumed that the
potato was not grown on the arid coast
but instead imported from the highlands
however recent research has shown that
it was a common part of the diet so it
was either being grown locally with the
aid of irrigation or being imported in
huge numbers
however to see the potato realize its
full potential as a crop let's move back
up to the highlands and take a look at
the later inca
they get a lot of credit for conquest
monumental architecture and that
dizzying system of roads but an often
overlooked achievement is what they
achieved in food security
food production was something that the
inca took very seriously and they
devoted vast resources to building up
agricultural infrastructure to produce
as much food as possible
we could devote much more time to this
but today we're just going to focus on
one part of this infrastructure
this is a kolka an inca store house
these were built up and down the empire
and were important depots for storing
supplies commodities and most
importantly food
you can see in this picture that it's
built on the slope of a hill and that's
by design the hillsides allow the kolka
to be well ventilated and cooled by winds
winds
many of these were also built with
gravel subfloors and drainage channels
that kept the structures as dry and cool
as possible making it an ideal place for
food storage
in fairness the inca were not the first
people to construct such buildings
archaeology has demonstrated that the
warri also produced similar storehouses
but how exactly were these used and what
have they got to do with potatoes
records from contact indicate that lots
of maize and charkie were stored in the
kolkas but excavations have revealed
that potatoes were stored there in huge
numbers honestly it's a match made in
heaven under these conditions untreated
food could last for a few years but in
the case of dried out foods like chunyo
they could last double that time
sometimes even a decade in such a
setting the inca always had a huge food
reserve that they could depend on to
supply armies on the march used for
local festivals and feasts and feed
common people in times of famine
food security on this level was an
achievement and for whole generations
starvation was a thing of the past
in one sense the system was almost too
successful and would actually come back
to bite the inca because when pizarro
began his conquest locals who decided to
side with the spanish could open the
doors of their kolkas to him and his men
the kolkas were so successful that they
even survived the conquest for decades
in 1547 a spanish force of over 2 000
men were able to consume over 800 cubic
meters of supplies and their leaders
commented how their appetites and needs
barely made a dent in the storage
the potato also played a part in andean
myths and beliefs the spanish noted that
among people in the highlands unusual
double potatoes were seen as good omens
and were kept in homes much to the
disapproval of the local church potatoes
often featured in harvest and planting
rituals some of which even persist to
this day
in ayakucho potatoes are buried with
coca leaves chicha and llama meat to
pachacama mother earth so that she'll
grant a bountiful harvest
perhaps the best known potato myth is
that of wat yakuri whose name means the
potato eater
in this uarochiri myth the unkept and
dirty looking potato eater hears of a
chief who is sick and cannot be healed
and has offered the hand of his
beautiful sister in marriage to anyone
who can heal him
wat yokuri sets off from his mountain
home and journeys to the village of the chief
chief
the chief kamachik and the rest of the
town are thoroughly unimpressed by what
yakuri's appearance but the chief's
sister chalpinyaka is the only one who
can see wat yakuri for the noble figure
that he truly is despite his appearance
throughout the myth watyakuri must not
only heal kamachik but must also pass a
series of trials
in doing so he confounds everyone's
expectations and first impressions and
amazes the town people by his talents
and skills and passes every trial heals
the chief and eventually marries
chaopinyaka like the potato wat yakuri
is dirty and lowly at first glance but
he's full of surprising vigor and talent
he perfectly embodies the power of the
humble potato
now we can't just end the story of the
potato here because as the title of the
episode says the potato got exported
after the conquest and to say that it
had a world impact is a gross understatement
understatement
in the decades after the conquest
potatoes slowly made their way across
the atlantic interestingly our word
potato comes from some confusion among
the spanish
they had encountered the sweet potato
when they arrived in the caribbean and
had actually taken a liking to its flavor
flavor
they knew these as batatas you can
probably see where this is going
when they encountered the potato or the
papa as it was called by the inca it got
confused back home with a sweet potato
since they were both similar looking
root vegetables the potato became the
patata which is where our current word
comes from
by the end of the 16th century the
potato had been introduced to many areas
of europe but it was having trouble
gaining traction the potato was little
more than a botanical curiosity fighting
for acceptance and that's probably
because there was a lot of weird
superstitions surrounding it
people believed that potatoes caused
rickets tuberculosis gout and leprosy
i mean what else would you expect from
those strange globular vegetables grown
in the darkness under the earth
because it wasn't mentioned in the bible
scottish clergymen discouraged their
parishioners from consuming it
as late as 1781 the encyclopedia
britannica referred to the potato as a
demoralizing escalant charming
charming
prussian rulers most notably frederick
the great went to huge lengths to
promote the use of the potato to a
peasantry that stubbornly refused to
consider it as a crop
the potatoes proponents knew that it
could become a valuable food source to
supplement traditional crops just for
some context farming in europe was
entirely dependent on grain harvests
that were about as dependable and
predictable as the weather
throw in things like war and disease and
you've got a pretty fragile food supply
starvation was always a lingering danger
and child mortality was extraordinarily high
high
contrast this with what we saw in the
inca empire and its incredible food
security there was a lot of room for the
potato to take an important role in
europe and eventually that's what
happened thankfully practicality won out
europeans began to appreciate the
potatoes qualities just as those andean
farmers had so long ago
here was a hearty plant that could
produce more food on less land was
weather resistant in a way that grains
were not and could be stored easily
studies have shown that areas that
adopted the potato into their farming
and diet consequently saw their
populations increase sometimes dramatically
dramatically
in 1650 europe had a population of
roughly 115 million people it would rise
to 140 million by 1750 then to 188
million by 1800 50 years later it would reach
reach
266 million and 50 years after that it
would be 400 million by 1900
in certain areas like ireland the
adoption of the potato allowed the
population to rise from one and a half
million in the early 17th century to a
staggering eight and a half million on
the eve of the potato famine in 1845
just for perspective ireland's current
population is only six and a half million
million
now i don't want to go into detail on
the irish potato famine there are better
videos on that topic but one thing that
i will point out is the reason that the
irish potato crop was so devastated and
that's that the island primarily grew
one variety of potato and this left them
at a very high risk for crop failure
something that would have been far less
likely in the andes with the many
varieties of potatoes that they
cultivated but let's take a step back
real quick the potato gave people
greater food security and greater food productivity
productivity
this also allowed more people to leave
subsistence farming completely and take
up new professions many of these people
would go to the cities where their labor
was put to use in the new industrial
centers potatoes played a vital role in
feeding and fueling the industrial
revolution by helping ensure an adequate
food supply and freeing up labor
now the potato wasn't just a hit in
europe it spread far beyond the
continent accompanying european
colonialism the potato was introduced to
asia and africa where they are still
grown today
by far the biggest success story is in
china where the potato was introduced by
the dutch around 1650 and was even
adopted as a delicacy by the imperial
family of china
soon it had spread throughout china and
was being widely cultivated
after china it reached central asia and
the tibetan plateau which were ideal
environments for the potato to thrive
and in turn it fueled a population
explosion to this day china remains the
leading producer of potatoes in the world
world
mainland africa also saw the potatoes
introduction later and after some
initial hesitance it became a staple in
certain areas and it's still widely
cultivated today
i think it's fair to say that the potato
is one of south america's important
historical exports perhaps even the most important
important
it completely changed the world and
enabled a period of sustained population
growth the next time you see a
population graph that looks like this
remember that one of the big causes for
that upward slope is your friend the potato
potato
at the same time though we shouldn't
just reduce the potato to a bland label
of nutritional facts and calories but
celebrated for its undying appeal people
love potatoes and they've worked their
way so deeply into culinary traditions
all over the world that their absence is
almost unimaginable can you imagine an
england without fish and chips an india
without sagaloo a poland without
pierogies a hanukkah celebration without
latkes a thanksgiving day turkey without
mashed potatoes just imagine poor
samwise gamgee without his precious taters
taters
i could wax poetry about this but i
think you get the idea the ancient
people of the andes are owed to debt
that we can never repay and we are much
the better for it
and that's going to wrap us up for today
hope you all enjoyed this ode to the
greatest root vegetable on the planet
special thanks to my patrons listed here
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take care and we'll see you in our next episode
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