The Corn Revolution: The First Traces of How America's Cereal Changed Everything
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain), May 13 (EFE).- Corn brought from America was gradually introduced into the diet of the inhabitants of the Canary Islands, a Spanish Atlantic archipelago, until it became a staple food in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when its harvests already surpassed those of wheat in places like Gran Canaria, an island whose population expansion was largely possible thanks to the new crop.
Eleven researchers from the universities of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), La Laguna, and Burgos (northern Spain), the Museo Canario (Canary Islands Museum), and the CSIC History Institute are publishing a study this month in the American Journal of Biological Anthropology on the effects that the arrival of a new food, corn, had on Canarian society.
And their results have relevance beyond the islands, because the Canary Islands were the gateway to the Old World for the new crops brought from America after the Discovery of 1492, so what happened in the Spanish archipelago can be seen as a preview of what would later happen in other territories, the first signatory of the work, Jonathan Santana, of the ULPGC, tells EFE.
AssessmentThe research examines whether the change in diet left any traces in hundreds of human bone remains recovered from archaeological sites dating from the 16th to 18th centuries in northern Gran Canaria, as well as in cattle bones found in the vicinity of the San Martín Hospital in Las Palmas, open from 1481 to 1780.
Their strategy was to measure the presence of C4 in these remains, a carbon isotope generated by the photosynthesis of plants such as corn and sorghum. Its concentration in the bones reveals a lot about the diet of the person or animal in question, because the consumption of Mediterranean cereals such as wheat or barley—those consumed in Europe until 1492—leaves a different imprint: the C3 isotope.
The results of the analysis indicate that in the 16th century, during the first decades of voyages to America, traces of isotopes from the consumption of corn, although in a minority, were already evident in the bones of these people and animals.
In the 17th century, a mixed diet of corn and Mediterranean cereals became established, and by the 18th century, corn was already seen as a fundamental component of the diet of both the island's inhabitants and the livestock that supplied them with meat and cheese and which, in turn, was increasingly fed corn as fodder.
The authors emphasize that this finding is consistent with historical data obtained from Gran Canaria's cereal production records, which were kept in detail for tax reasons.
In 1789, there is evidence that 42,554 bushels of corn were produced on the island (at 55.5 liters per bushel: 2,361 cubic meters), compared to 74,116 of wheat (4,113 m3); but just two decades later, in 1813, the harvest of this primary cereal on the island was already almost double that of wheat (98,708 bushels compared to 57,527, or 5,477 m3 compared to 3,195).
This shift in crops, the article highlights, coincided with the increasing presence of cattle on the island (during the aboriginal period, animal protein in the diet came primarily from goats and sheep) and with new agricultural techniques associated with the use of livestock excrement as fertilizer.
As a result, in the north of Gran Canaria, the wettest and most fertile slope, corn cultivation quickly displaced sugarcane plantations, the "white gold" that had driven the economy in the decades following the conquest of the islands.
And all of this led to profound social changes: corn and new agricultural techniques led to significant population growth in Gran Canaria and favored the expansion of cities.
And if you haven't received it yet, you can join our mailing list here.
efeverde
