Learn About Potatoes

Throughout history many things have helped shape the way we live, learn, and thrive today. Sadly many of these things are overlooked and not noticed. One of these things is the potato. The potato is evident in many cultures, some of them revere the vegetable such as the Incas, and others of them could simply care less about the starchy tuber.
   
Archaeologists have found traces of potatoes in the ruins that scatter across Chile and Peru that date back as far as the 5th century BCE. They believe that the Incas grew potatoes for food as well as worshiped them. Potato remnants have even been found to be buried with the dead from this time. To the Incas the potato was known as the “papa” and even today they still use the same word to represent it. The Incas would often dry and store potatoes in preparation for possible times of hardship, and also carried the potato with them on long journeys. The Incan potato was much different from the average potato of today. It had a deep purple skin and yellow interior.
   
When the Spanish came to Peru in the 16th century ACE was the first time Europeans where exposed to the potato. Later in 1565 the potato made it’s way back to Europe by the explorer Gonzalo Jimenez De Quesada. Quesada hoped that the potato would be a proper replacement for the gold he had hoped to find. Soon the potato was referred to in Spain as a type of truffle and was called “Tartuffo”. Potatoes where also often given to sailors because sailors who ate the potato did not suffer from scurvy, a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C, this disease was particularly effectual on sailors. 
   
In the year 1597 John Gerard, a British author, wrote a book entitled The Herbal in it he wrote
“Potatoes of the Virginia. The potato of the Virginia has many coppers flexible cables and that crawl for earth… The root is think, large and tuberosa; not much various one for shape, color and sapore from common potatoes (the sweet potatoes) but a smaller Po; some are round as spheres, other ovals; the some longer other shortest ones… It grows spontaneously in America where, as Clusius has reported, it has been discovered; from then I have received these roots from the Virginia otherwise Norembega calls; they grow and the prosper in my garden like in their country of origin… Its correct name is cited in the title it. Poiche it possesses not only the shape and proportions of potatoes, but also their grade vole sapore and virtue we can call them potatoes of the America or Virginia”
                   
In this exert John Gerald describes early potatoes in different variations as well as the early domestication of potatoes. In this exert John refers to potatoes as “Potatoes of the Virginia” when in fact the potatoes where from South America and had nothing to do with the state of Virginia of the United States.
   
The potato was soon brought to England and Italy in about 1585, it was brought later to Germany and Belgium about 1587, later still to Austria around 1588 and finally o France in 1600. In all of these places during introduction the potato was considered strange. Some thought it was poisonous, and evil. In Western Europe the potato was blamed for many diseases such as narcosis, syphilis, early death, sterility, and unrestrained sexuality. The potato was so hated that an edit was made in the town of Besancon France, it said. “In view of the fact that the potato is a pernicious substance whose use can cause leprosy, it is hereby forbidden under pain of fine, to cultivate it.” This quote is a great example of how the potato was highly ridiculed against and how little people knew about it.
   
Around 1859 the potato was introduced in Ireland by the British explorer Sir Walter Raleigh. He planted them at his estate at Myrtle Grove.
   
Throughout the 1600s potatoes had been prodding the United States but until 1719 the potato attempts had been unsuccessful. That is until Scotch-Irish immigrants planted them, and from then on they began to sweep across the nation.