More importantly, their gigantic bodies were able to safely absorb any toxicity in those plants - effectively rendering any negative effects harmless, according to Inside Science.Įnter humanity. In their wild forms, genus Cucurbita species are incredibly bitter - but giant megafauna like mastodons and mammoths couldn't taste the bitterness. In 2015, Penn State researchers published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that suggested humans are what saved genus Cucurbita from following those animals into extinction.

Much like giant ground sloths spread the avocado around South America, mastodons and wooly mammoths spread wild pumpkins, squash, gourds, and other members of the genus Cucurbita across Mexico and up into what would one day be the US and Canada, according to Popular Science. We have ancient humans to thank for these autumn veggies. By the 1850s, tomatoes were so popular that associating your other edible crops with them was a valid sales method at markets. Some people in the colonies were early adopters, eating tomatoes back in the 1700s. Different rumors about green tomato worms that were 'poisonous as a rattlesnake' spread, according to Smithsonian Magazine. Meanwhile, in the British North American Colonies, not everyone could make up their minds about tomatoes. Thus, most people of the time believed that tomatoes were poisonous - and rumors of the 'poison apple' quickly spread. Many people didn't just get very sick - they died. Tomatoes are very acidic, and when they were served on those pewter platters, they leached large amounts of lead from them, according to Smithsonian magazine. By the late 1700s, the tomato as a food item in Europe had a very bad reputation - all because of poorly understood lead poisoning.Īt the time, wealthy European households were using pewter plates - which were very high in lead. Tomatoes made it to Europe around the year 1519 but were only grown for ornamental purposes, according to Smithsonian Magazine. Prior to this discovery, scientists had dated tomatillos back only as far as nine to eleven million years, according to the Washington Post. The fossils date back 52 million years - when a supercontinent cluster connected what are known today as South America, Australia, and Antarctica. As of 2017, scientists found fossils that they named Physalis infinemundi - which means 'at the world's end,' since they were found at the southern tip of Patagonia in South America, according to the Washington Post. The idea of maize as a crop, for which we can thank Meso-American farmers, is pretty common - but the same is also true of tomatoes and tomatillos. Tomatillos were believed to be poisonous. In 2017, a company called Masienda Bodega started making and selling authentic landrace corn tortillas in Whole Foods across the country, according to Civil Eats. Since it was grown over a broad geographic area, individual farmers coaxed landraces that were specifically adapted to environmental conditions - which is why there is so much variety in traditional landraces today.īut what happened before maize was domesticated ? 'Based on archaeological evidence and modern DNA evidence, we already know that maize was domesticated in Mexico sometime between about 10,000 and 6,000 years ago,' Nathan Wales of the Natural History Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen told the BBC.Īncient teosinte cobs were less than an inch long and only produced around eight rows of kernels - or about half that of modern maize.Įven though you might love a good corn tortilla now - or you might make them yourself - most commercially produced corn tortillas and corn flours are made from homogenized, commercial corn - not traditional landraces. Meso-American farmers selectively domesticated over 50 separate strains of maize - called landraces, which Massive Science likens to dog breeds, only with different varieties of corn. It often indicates a user profile.Īt the height of summer, there are few vegetables we love more than our gorgeous, golden corn - especially straight off the grill.īut we don't rely on it as a staple food item - which is exactly what it was in Central America about 4,300 years ago, according to Massive Science.

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