
The curse of the potato - miiiiiike
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/25/the-secret-ancient-history-of-the-potato-that-could-change-the-story-of-civilization/
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Smaug123
I'm not convinced by "complex hierarchies and taxation schemes". It sounds
just as plausible that grain was one of the first really tradeable forms of
food, so people became able to trade non-food-related skills for food, with
people from further away. Your ability to do this is badly limited if you're
using wet foods like potatoes, because you are only able to trade with people
fairly nearby before the potatoes start sprouting; but with grain you can send
your son off to the market three hours' wagon-ride away with a month's worth
of crop, for instance.

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azernik
You're thinking on too small a scale. One of the most important commercial
activities in the Roman Empire was the importation of grain from across the
Mediterranean (especially from Egypt) to the capital.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cura_Annonae)

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rtpg
By the early 18th century, Japan had developed full-on derivatives markets
(not just futures but CDS-style bets) for its rice crops.

I like the "portability/storability" hypothesis this article is proposing for
societal development. If only because it becomes a proxy for financial
systems. And you don't have to "convince" people that your money is useful:
You can always eat it!

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paganel
> Japan had developed full-on derivatives markets (not just futures but CDS-
> style bets) for its rice crops.

Any English-written resources for that? It sounds really interesting.

~~~
rtpg
Was trying to find the section in a textbook I had read about this, but this
article[0] on the Dojima Market goes into a good amount of detail about this,
and is a fun read.

[0]:
[http://disciplinas.stoa.usp.br/pluginfile.php/69204/mod_reso...](http://disciplinas.stoa.usp.br/pluginfile.php/69204/mod_resource/content/4/CHY%20GED_LS-%23795938-v1-Dojima_Rice_Market_Case.pdf)

~~~
gopz
> Recognizing the potential profit opportunity, the Nagoya merchant bought the
> future harvest of his region by paying approximately 10% to the farmers and
> writing drafts for the rest of the negotiated amount. These drafts were not
> to be presented for payment before the rice was actually sold. When the
> harvest came in, he stored it and after three or four months sold it with a
> profit of 30- 40%, as prices had climbed in the meantime.2

It is interesting that this sort of financial instrument would have been
totally impossible with water logged veggies.

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barking
Showing Ireland as being dependent on roots and tubers in pre-colonial times
is just plain wrong. It was the colonisers who brought the potato to Ireland.

This makes me suspect that the data is being made to fit the theory here and
that they didn't want to leave out Ireland because, well, people would expect
it to be there in any article about the impact of the potato :)

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jameshart
Turnips and beets are roots too.

~~~
barrkel
Ireland's myths and legends all revolve around cattle, and cattle - milk,
specifically - was the primary source of food before potatoes, along with some
grain and vegetables:

[http://www.bonappetit.com/trends/article/what-the-irish-
ate-...](http://www.bonappetit.com/trends/article/what-the-irish-ate-before-
potatoes)

~~~
tgflynn
Great article, I'm a little skeptical about the sourcing though. Most of the
information seems to come from general literature (as opposed to something
more objective, like say taxation records). What people choose to write about
isn't necessarily what's most common in practice. For example a visitor from
France would probably be more likely to write about some strange kind of
cheese he's never seen before than the bread that looks more or less similar
to what he's been eating everyday.

I don't doubt the importance of dairy but I doubt it accounted for the
majority of people's calorie intake.

~~~
benbreen
Agreed, fascinating thesis but these types of big picture analysis are always
as weak as their least reliable source of data. And as others have pointed
out, labeling "pre colonial" Ireland as reliant on tubers makes me question
their sources. I have the same problem with Pinker's "Better Angels of Our
Nature" which seems hugely convincing until you check the footnotes and
realize he's relying substantially on historical data from a single out of
date and non peer reviewed source.

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whiddershins
I loved the starting premise that it was so much better to develop large,
hierarchical, societies.

Better for whom?

Better for surviving contact with other societies, sure.

Better for quality of life for the average person? Probably not so much.

~~~
wyager
>Better for quality of life for the average person? Probably not so much.

Sure, if you don't think medicine, technology, or literacy contribute to
quality of life. All evidence suggests that, back then at least, large,
organized social structures were very important for developing technology.

~~~
wz1000
Even if technological progress was slowed, leading to a worse average quality
of life compared to more advanced societies, wouldn't the lag be worthwhile if
the society was more egalitarian by the time progress did happen?

~~~
ci5er
Egalitarian? That just means equal protection under the law. I' guessing you
mean something akin to everyone ending up with the same size basket of goodies
at the end of each round of the game...

Of the societies we humans apparently know how to create... We know how to
create societies with equal misery. We have from time-to-time been able to
construct unequal societies with growing wealth, where everyone did better
than their parents, over time -- and than those in many societies around them
and in history.

What we have never been able to construct is a society where everyone is equal
and wealthy and getting more-so. This may or may not be possible with human
beings. One thing is certain -- we're not bees.

While poverty is a real tragedy and a real grind, a harm to people that should
be mitigated, it's not clear that the fact that someone somewhere might be
richer than me is any sort of tragedy whatsoever that needs to be addressed.

~~~
wz1000
> What we have never been able to construct is a society where everyone is
> equal and wealthy and getting more-so. This may or may not be possible with
> human beings. One thing is certain -- we're not bees.

This is false, or at least unjustified. Sure, an equal society may not grow as
fast as an unequal one, and so the latter may take the former out of the
competition. But how can you conclude that such a society won't progress in
isolation?

~~~
ci5er
> But how can you conclude that such a society won't progress in isolation?

Don't know. We aren't bees or ants - we're tribal hierarchical apes - so we
don't have a lot of isolated (or even positive) "everyone is equal here"
examples to study.

The socio-biologist E.O. Wilson, when asked about such altruistic-sounding
theories, responded: "Right theory - wrong species".

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dmckeon
Grain crops can be burned in the field by attackers, as well as stolen. The WP
article seems to overlook the possibility of slavery in early cultures, which
would put social choices about crops into a vastly different dynamic.

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ethbro
Slavery / undervalued labor is an interesting twist, as I imagine it would
factor heavily into the value calculations.

The "more work (but still net positive food production)" vs "storage /
transport" calculus seems like it would be interesting as different variables
are changed. (Side note: I am not oblivious to the social evil we're talking
about, but it is historically relevant)

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mcguire
The article fails to mention the other downside to roots: a bumper crop last
year and a drought this means you still starve.

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NoMoreNicksLeft
From the article:

> But the fact that grains posed a security risk may have been a blessing in
> disguise. The economists believe that societies cultivating crops like wheat
> and barley may have experienced extra pressure to protect their harvests,
> galvanizing the creation of warrior classes and the development of complex
> hierarchies and taxation schemes.

How is that a blessing? Sounds more like a curse.

~~~
eloff
Probably because the societies that developed hierarchies, taxation, and
military conquered their neighbors and grew stronger and more influential in
the ancient world.

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ap22213
I _love_ subjects like this. But, I have a hard time believing its conclusions
because it reveals more of our modern modes and assumptions than the
prehistoric ones.

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awinter-py
the paper, which isn't named in the wapo article, is 'cereals appropriability
and hierarchy' here
[http://economics.mit.edu/files/10771](http://economics.mit.edu/files/10771).

The 'anthropological database' the wapo article describes is murdock's
ethnographic atlas from 1967 and a geocoded 2013 derivative by fenske.

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badloginagain
It's an interesting theory, but as with all of these kind of theories, mostly
conjecture.

Crops are a cornerstone of human society, so it stands to reason that
different crop types would after societies differently. I think this theory
might be a factor in human development, but I think it would be a small one.

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SwellJoe
Usually, I avoid the comment sections on most websites, due to the alarmingly
low quality...but the comments on this article are actually quite good, and
provide some interesting counter arguments and additional historical context.

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whyenot
> Root crops, on the other hand, don't store well at all. They're heavy, full
> of water, and rot quickly once taken out of the ground.

"In the Altiplano, potatoes provided the principal energy source for the Inca
Empire, its predecessors, and its Spanish successor. In Bolivia and Peru above
10,000 feet altitude, tubers exposed to the cold night air turned into chuño;
when kept in permanently frozen underground storehouses, chuño can be stored
for years with no loss of nutritional value."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_potato](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_potato)

Seems like the potato was more of a blessing than a curse.

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masklinn
Had you read the article, you'd have noticed that this exact fact is noted and
asserted to support the hypothesis:

> And then there is the case of the Incas, who oversaw an empire that grew
> both grain and potatoes. The Incas developed a way of freeze-drying potatoes
> by leaving them out at high elevations. This technology allowed them to
> treat potatoes like a grain: non-perishable, transportable and taxable.

The inca was only one of the major pre-modern root-growing groups, and the
only one which had access to freeze-drying conditions.

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whyenot
Obviously I did not read the article the whole way through. Thank you for
setting me straight.

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vinceguidry
I can't take an article discussing the New World's technological inferiority
seriously if it doesn't mention horses.

