Contribution of the Cultures

Greg · 07-28-2008, 12:49 AM

Melva and I had a fascinating conversation this afternoon. We were totting up the contributions that sundry cultures have made to the state of human life on Earth.

From the Greeks came the foundations of philosophy, medicine, and science. The Arabians gave us algebra. The Romans invented paved roads, the water wheel, and big government; and later their Italian offspring came up with the corporation. The Chinese gave us the noodle and (maybe) gunpowder. The Polynesians showed us fascinating alternative cultures. The Scots contributed modern engineering, the modern warrior code, and the bagpipes. (Not to mention haggis. Please don't mention haggis!) The Scandinavians came up with deep-sea fishing. Aboriginal Australians invented some boffo musical instruments. We needn't go on about contributions of the British and their rowdy offspring, the Americans; they invented everything from waxed paper to the airplane.

But when we came to the indigenous tribes of the Americas--those stone-age tribes often irrationally called "native" Americans--we got stumped. Fertilizers? Nope; nothing original there though it makes for a good story. Horses? Naw, those were imported by Europeans. How about tobacco? Well yeah, but out of fashion these days. Maybe Mexican food? Uh uh; that was the Spanish. OK, says I, how about syphilis? True, but not exactly something a culture wants to be credited for.

Finally, after considerable frustrating discussion, we found it! From at least one of the indigenous tribes of Americas comes perhaps the greatest contribution to modern culture since the invention of writing: chocolate!

Miros1 · 07-28-2008, 03:42 AM

I thought syphilis was a European import too... off to Wikipedia to check this out! Hm, apparently it's somewhat homegrown!

Don't forget Montezuma's Revenge, aka Guinea Pig Disease!

Greg · 07-28-2008, 10:53 AM

Yup. Syphilis is a uniquely New World disease, though of course it has been exported all over the globe, probably starting with Columbus's crew.

Greg · 08-13-2008, 03:37 AM

(I had to delete a few messages here, so let's see if we can get this back on track.)

If syphilis had existed in Europe in pre-Columbian times, there would be a heck of a lot more documenation for it than a sentence about veneral disease from an ancient Greek writer (several veneral diseases have been known in Europe throughout recorded history) and a few pits on one bone from 1500 years later and more than a thousand miles away; and there would not be a huge body of writing about the strange new veneral disease that spread from European seaports after the discovery of the new world.

I don't know the origin of this notion that syphilis did not originate in the New World, but this is the first I have ever heard of it. For what it's worth, even now one of Melva's avocations is epidemiology (she studied microbiology in college), and she has never heard of it, either.

But hey, if anyone wants to believe something that somebody wrote on the Internet in preference to hundreds of years of medical investigations, you are most welcome to your beliefs! You know I'm not one to argue with other people's religious beliefs as long as they don't try to promote them on my little board.

Crystal · 08-15-2008, 02:10 PM

Was it the Aztecs who discovered chocolate or the Incas? Didn't coffee come from America too?

Greg · 08-16-2008, 12:25 AM

According to the Field Museum in Chicago, it was the Maya and the Aztecs who discovered chocolate about 2,000 years ago. Considering all that's required to make the stuff palatable (even though they didn't sweeten it), it's amazing that anybody thought of it as food!

According to an article in the Wikipedia, coffee dates back to the eleventh century in Ethiopia; so, no, it didn't originate in the New World. Today it's the second largest export from some central American countries, especially Columbia (and in my humble opinion, Columbian coffee is the best brew there is), but it apparently originated in Africa.

That's really interesting because the active stimulant in coffee (caffeine) is so very similar to the active stimulant in chocolate (theobromine) that I'd expect them to have a common ancestor. Come to think of it, maybe they did! Plants could have spread across the supercontinent Gondwana during the Triassic (about 200 million years ago) and then evolved into different species after Gondwana broke up during mid-Jurassic (about 167 million years ago) to form South America and Africa.
Ref: Wikipedia article on Gondwana

Greg · 08-16-2008, 12:44 AM

I was wondering about the theory of a common ancestry between coffee and chocolate so I dug a little deeper.

Coffee beans grow like berries on a bush plant...

Coffee Berries

... which don't look at all like the seed pods of the cacao tree...

Cocao Seed Pods

... but on the other hand, look at the similarity between the leaves!

Cacao Plant

Allowing for the dramatic differences in climate and other environmental factors over the past 200 million years or so, we would expect the busy coffee plant to be very different from the more tree-like cacao plant; however, there are enough similarities that it just might be reasonable to suspect that they have a close common ancestor.

The coffee plant only grows in very high altitudes and doesn't have to compete so much with large trees, so it can afford to be bushy and make its living offering berries to passersby. In contrast, the cacao plant grows in lush forests where it had to grow tall, like a tree, to compete for sunlight; and if its berries were too easy to get at the animals would have made off with them before they ready to propogate the species. Its seed pods might have been there to protect the seeds until they were ready to reproduce.

Those seed pods do look like something you would want to eat, but what a surprise it must have been to the first fellow to pick one!

Sita · 08-16-2008, 02:10 AM

/me hesitates to post but can't resist - you do know chocolate is actually very difficult to get right don't you? It has to be grown within a narrow temperature range, and then fermented under certain humidity - what amazes me is that they actually worked all this out. (I worked with biologists and botanists in last job, one chap did his PhD on chocolate/cocoa - and I made his web pages - unfortunately no longer online.)

Oh and this may be inspiring: "Partake In The 1785 Inn's Flaming Cocoa Lava Drink - They call this "warm mud to take the chill off of a cool spring evening", the 1785's signature flaming Cocoa Lava is sure to leave you smiley clean; have two and you'd better plan to spend the night! This drink features a flaming concoction of Peppermint Schnapps, hot chocolate and Bailey's Irish Cream all topped off with whipped cream and cinnamon . The glasses are rimmed with caramelised cinnamon sugar."

Greg · 08-16-2008, 04:19 AM

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It's not so much that some Aztec guy might have thought to break open one of those gourds to see if there was anything good to eat inside--it's all the other stuff they had to do to get from there to chocolate!

Something made that first Aztec guy think, "Hey, let's ferment these seeds and see what happens!" Or else they made something rather different for their royal libation. Maybe they were experimenting with lots of stuff to see what would make the best beer. As far as I know, they were already fermenting the seeds when Coronado showed up. Everything else they do to come up with what we know as chocolate was later innovation.

I think the growing conditions are not such a surprise when you express it in the active rather than the passive voice. It's not that it "has to be grown within in a narrow temperature range" but rather that the plant evolved to grow in a narrow temperature range, and that's where people found it.

The same region also has the correct temperature and humidity for the bacteria that do whatever they do in the fermentation process. In Central America, they just harvest the seeds and ferment them outside in the open air.

Greg · 08-16-2008, 04:21 AM

More amusement: I happened to notice that (at least in these pictures) most of the leaves on the coffee and cacao plants both have 10 convex parts.

And even more: Here's the post on the Hullabaloo where I made some notes about how close caffeine is to theobromine.

Miros1 · 08-17-2008, 07:52 PM

There's a weed/tree in my backyard that looks suspiciously like the cacao tree... I'm certain it isn't, because it survives the winter and I have to lop it off again.

Probably that Aztec guy said, "Hm, I wonder if these old pods are any good," and they'd just happened to ferment while sitting around.

Crystal · 08-17-2008, 08:14 PM

Miros does your tree have pods like that? I think they look like squashes or some kind of fruit so I think your right the Aztec guy probably thought that and then threw the broken pods on the ground and somebody found them later and thought then they smelled good.

I googled for squash plants and found this link for Colorado State University http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/TRA...psymptoms.html

They don't look like coffee or cocoa plants but inside the pods theres seeds like cocoa pods. Coco says look at pomegranates insides she thinks they are relatives of chocolate. Jeff says yeah look they have the same color eyes!!

Crystal · 08-17-2008, 08:17 PM

Reader says this explains why Coco is so much fun when she's fermented!

Miros1 · 08-17-2008, 08:33 PM

I don't know about pods. I lop the thing off so it has to spend the summer growing back instead of growing pods. It's nasty smelling when you bump it too.

Crystal · 08-17-2008, 08:40 PM

Yeah I do that too. Jeff calls them volunteer trees. They just keep popping up when I don't want them. Sometimes I just dig them up. Anything that looks like a tree growing between the deck and the view of the mountains I dig up because I don't want trees to grow up and block the mountains not even maples. If it was a chocolate tree I might give it a chance tho!

07-28-2008, 12:49 AM	#1
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	Contribution of the Cultures Melva and I had a fascinating conversation this afternoon. We were totting up the contributions that sundry cultures have made to the state of human life on Earth. From the Greeks came the foundations of philosophy, medicine, and science. The Arabians gave us algebra. The Romans invented paved roads, the water wheel, and big government; and later their Italian offspring came up with the corporation. The Chinese gave us the noodle and (maybe) gunpowder. The Polynesians showed us fascinating alternative cultures. The Scots contributed modern engineering, the modern warrior code, and the bagpipes. (Not to mention haggis. Please don't mention haggis!) The Scandinavians came up with deep-sea fishing. Aboriginal Australians invented some boffo musical instruments. We needn't go on about contributions of the British and their rowdy offspring, the Americans; they invented everything from waxed paper to the airplane. But when we came to the indigenous tribes of the Americas--those stone-age tribes often irrationally called "native" Americans--we got stumped. Fertilizers? Nope; nothing original there though it makes for a good story. Horses? Naw, those were imported by Europeans. How about tobacco? Well yeah, but out of fashion these days. Maybe Mexican food? Uh uh; that was the Spanish. OK, says I, how about syphilis? True, but not exactly something a culture wants to be credited for. Finally, after considerable frustrating discussion, we found it! From at least one of the indigenous tribes of Americas comes perhaps the greatest contribution to modern culture since the invention of writing: *chocolate!* __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

07-28-2008, 03:42 AM	#2
Miros1 Goddess for Life Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: NY State Posts: 3,303	I thought syphilis was a European import too... off to Wikipedia to check this out! Hm, apparently it's somewhat homegrown! Don't forget Montezuma's Revenge, aka Guinea Pig Disease! __________________ A game that horrible Odessa-person introduced me to: http://www.puzzlepirates.com/?affili...163251&lang=en I'm spreading the addiction by corrupting all my friends (and attempting to make in-game money when they try the game). Last edited by Miros1 : 07-28-2008 at 03:55 AM.

07-28-2008, 10:53 AM	#3
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	Yup. Syphilis is a uniquely New World disease, though of course it has been exported all over the globe, probably starting with Columbus's crew. __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

08-13-2008, 03:37 AM	#4
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	(I had to delete a few messages here, so let's see if we can get this back on track.) If syphilis had existed in Europe in pre-Columbian times, there would be a heck of a lot more documenation for it than a sentence about veneral disease from an ancient Greek writer (several veneral diseases have been known in Europe throughout recorded history) and a few pits on one bone from 1500 years later and more than a thousand miles away; and there would not be a huge body of writing about the strange new veneral disease that spread from European seaports after the discovery of the new world. I don't know the origin of this notion that syphilis did not originate in the New World, but this is the first I have ever heard of it. For what it's worth, even now one of Melva's avocations is epidemiology (she studied microbiology in college), and she has never heard of it, either. But hey, if anyone wants to believe something that somebody wrote on the Internet in preference to hundreds of years of medical investigations, you are most welcome to your beliefs! You know I'm not one to argue with other people's religious beliefs as long as they don't try to promote them on my little board. __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know? Last edited by Greg : 08-13-2008 at 03:45 AM.

08-16-2008, 12:25 AM	#6
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	According to the Field Museum in Chicago, it was the Maya and the Aztecs who discovered chocolate about 2,000 years ago. Considering all that's required to make the stuff palatable (even though they didn't sweeten it), it's amazing that anybody thought of it as food! According to an article in the Wikipedia, coffee dates back to the eleventh century in Ethiopia; so, no, it didn't originate in the New World. Today it's the second largest export from some central American countries, especially Columbia (and in my humble opinion, Columbian coffee is the best brew there is), but it apparently originated in Africa. That's really interesting because the active stimulant in coffee (caffeine) is so very similar to the active stimulant in chocolate (theobromine) that I'd expect them to have a common ancestor. Come to think of it, maybe they did! Plants could have spread across the supercontinent Gondwana during the Triassic (about 200 million years ago) and then evolved into different species after Gondwana broke up during mid-Jurassic (about 167 million years ago) to form South America and Africa. Ref: Wikipedia article on Gondwana __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

08-15-2008, 02:10 PM	#5
Crystal Addicted Anjafan Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 160	Was it the Aztecs who discovered chocolate or the Incas? Didn't coffee come from America too?

08-16-2008, 12:44 AM	#7
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	I was wondering about the theory of a common ancestry between coffee and chocolate so I dug a little deeper. Coffee beans grow like berries on a bush plant... Coffee Berries ... which don't look at all like the seed pods of the cacao tree... Cocao Seed Pods ... but on the other hand, look at the similarity between the leaves! Cacao Plant Allowing for the dramatic differences in climate and other environmental factors over the past 200 million years or so, we would expect the busy coffee plant to be very different from the more tree-like cacao plant; however, there are enough similarities that it just might be reasonable to suspect that they have a close common ancestor. The coffee plant only grows in very high altitudes and doesn't have to compete so much with large trees, so it can afford to be bushy and make its living offering berries to passersby. In contrast, the cacao plant grows in lush forests where it had to grow tall, like a tree, to compete for sunlight; and if its berries were too easy to get at the animals would have made off with them before they ready to propogate the species. Its seed pods might have been there to protect the seeds until they were ready to reproduce. Those seed pods do look like something you would want to eat, but what a surprise it must have been to the first fellow to pick one! __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

08-16-2008, 02:10 AM	#8
Sita Solar Max Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: England Posts: 371	/me hesitates to post but can't resist - you do know chocolate is actually very difficult to get right don't you? It has to be grown within a narrow temperature range, and then fermented under certain humidity - what amazes me is that they actually worked all this out. (I worked with biologists and botanists in last job, one chap did his PhD on chocolate/cocoa - and I made his web pages - unfortunately no longer online.) Oh and this may be inspiring: "Partake In The 1785 Inn's Flaming Cocoa Lava Drink - They call this "warm mud to take the chill off of a cool spring evening", the 1785's signature flaming Cocoa Lava is sure to leave you smiley clean; have two and you'd better plan to spend the night! This drink features a flaming concoction of Peppermint Schnapps, hot chocolate and Bailey's Irish Cream all topped off with whipped cream and cinnamon . The glasses are rimmed with caramelised cinnamon sugar." Last edited by Sita : 08-16-2008 at 02:15 AM.

08-16-2008, 04:19 AM	#9
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It's not so much that some Aztec guy might have thought to break open one of those gourds to see if there was anything good to eat inside--it's all the other stuff they had to do to get from there to chocolate! Something made that first Aztec guy think, "Hey, let's ferment these seeds and see what happens!" Or else they made something rather different for their royal libation. Maybe they were experimenting with lots of stuff to see what would make the best beer. As far as I know, they were already fermenting the seeds when Coronado showed up. Everything else they do to come up with what we know as chocolate was later innovation. I think the growing conditions are not such a surprise when you express it in the active rather than the passive voice. It's not that it "has to be grown within in a narrow temperature range" but rather that the plant evolved to grow in a narrow temperature range, and that's where people found it. The same region also has the correct temperature and humidity for the bacteria that do whatever they do in the fermentation process. In Central America, they just harvest the seeds and ferment them outside in the open air. __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

08-16-2008, 04:21 AM	#10
Greg Da Guy Wut Owns Dis Joint Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: Texas Posts: 3,566	More amusement: I happened to notice that (at least in these pictures) most of the leaves on the coffee and cacao plants both have 10 convex parts. And even more: Here's the post on the Hullabaloo where I made some notes about how close caffeine is to theobromine. __________________ Who are all these people and what do they know?

08-17-2008, 07:52 PM	#11
Miros1 Goddess for Life Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: NY State Posts: 3,303	There's a weed/tree in my backyard that looks suspiciously like the cacao tree... I'm certain it isn't, because it survives the winter and I have to lop it off again. Probably that Aztec guy said, "Hm, I wonder if these old pods are any good," and they'd just happened to ferment while sitting around. __________________ A game that horrible Odessa-person introduced me to: http://www.puzzlepirates.com/?affili...163251&lang=en I'm spreading the addiction by corrupting all my friends (and attempting to make in-game money when they try the game).

08-17-2008, 08:14 PM	#12
Crystal Addicted Anjafan Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 160	Miros does your tree have pods like that? I think they look like squashes or some kind of fruit so I think your right the Aztec guy probably thought that and then threw the broken pods on the ground and somebody found them later and thought then they smelled good. I googled for squash plants and found this link for Colorado State University http://www.coopext.colostate.edu/TRA...psymptoms.html They don't look like coffee or cocoa plants but inside the pods theres seeds like cocoa pods. Coco says look at pomegranates insides she thinks they are relatives of chocolate. Jeff says yeah look they have the same color eyes!!

08-17-2008, 08:17 PM	#13
Crystal Addicted Anjafan Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 160	Reader says this explains why Coco is so much fun when she's fermented!

08-17-2008, 08:33 PM	#14
Miros1 Goddess for Life Join Date: Mar 2007 Location: NY State Posts: 3,303	I don't know about pods. I lop the thing off so it has to spend the summer growing back instead of growing pods. It's nasty smelling when you bump it too. __________________ A game that horrible Odessa-person introduced me to: http://www.puzzlepirates.com/?affili...163251&lang=en I'm spreading the addiction by corrupting all my friends (and attempting to make in-game money when they try the game).

08-17-2008, 08:40 PM	#15
Crystal Addicted Anjafan Join Date: Aug 2008 Posts: 160	Yeah I do that too. Jeff calls them volunteer trees. They just keep popping up when I don't want them. Sometimes I just dig them up. Anything that looks like a tree growing between the deck and the view of the mountains I dig up because I don't want trees to grow up and block the mountains not even maples. If it was a chocolate tree I might give it a chance tho!