Inca Legacy
The root of disappointment
The Inca are justifiably famous for their amazing architectural achievements, made even more astounding because they did all this without metal tools. A lot of these skills did not actually originate with the Inca, but were consolidated in a single, rather short-lived Incan empire through conquest of older cultures. As the empire was largely mountainous, agricultural land was scarce, so entire mountainsides were converted into terraced fields with 2- to 3-meter-high stone walls, with a few buildings thrown in for good measure. How the Inca managed to transport giant stones and fit them so perfectly, stone upon mortarless stone, is still rather mysterious, in view of their lack of metal tools.
On these terraced fields, the Inca grew locally domesticated plants, most famously, many varieties of potatoes, in addition to a crop, quinoa, that has gained recent popularity with the organic crowd in the United States thereby inflating the price of this staple for poor people in Peru. We visited several terraced archeological sites, now covered in grass accented here and there with a tall plant with crimson, tubular flowers. This was cantuta, the national flower of Peru, and I imagine it once grew among the potatoes, quinoa, and other Incan crops. The red, tubular flowers suggest pollination by hummingbirds, highly likely because Peru is as much the center of hummingbird evolution as of potato domestication and is home to an astounding range of hummingbird species.
Here is what Wikipedia has to say about potatoes: “There are about 5,000 potato varieties worldwide, 3,000 of which are found in the Andes alone —mainly in Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile, and Colombia. Over 100 cultivars might be found in a single valley, and a dozen or more might be maintained by a single agricultural household. The varieties belong to eight or nine species …. [T]here are about 200 wild species and subspecies.”
So, you'd think that with all these varieties and species of potatoes, the Andean people would have come up with something really tasty, right? Well, that's what I thought when we headed to Peru, and my little German heart went pitty-pat at the thought of all those different, delicious potato tastes. The reality was a long series of disappointments, for every one of the 8 or 10 different potato varieties was dry and starchy, not the waxy, creamy sensory experience I had hoped for, the kind of potato that wants only a sprinkle of salt and a kiss of butter. Alas, 'twas not to be. So, I wondered what have all those Peruvian Indians been doing for all these centuries that they haven't been able to come up with a decent potato? Why, they even eat potatoes that are actually toxic and must be eaten with a detoxifying clay! You ask, why bother? Is that the Inca version of Japanese fugu where the idea that you might die eating it is essential to its enjoyment?
Andean people still grow a huge variety of potatoes in a traditional manner, high in the mountains where the air is thin, cold, and dry. Upon harvest, they lay their crop out to desiccate in little piles or scattered tubers. Closer inspection reveals that a large fraction of these potatoes is infested by the larvae and pupae of beetles, white and wiggling. Their fate is to be ground into potato flour, to be stored and eaten later. No American would knowingly eat a weevily potato, but here, such squeamishness is absent, and the insects are simply protein and fat supplements.
The upshot of my potato experience in Peru was that, as many wonderful crops as the Andean people domesticated, the potato wasn't among them. It remained for Europeans to develop this beginning from a mere source of starch into a food with a passionate and loyal following, indeed an important part of several national identities. On the other hand, Europeans missed the boat by not importing the cantuta for its beauty.
A tiny bite from A. E. Housman seems appropriate here among the toxic potatoes:
There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
--I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.
During WW1, my grandfather's unit had run out of food when they came upon a German farmhouse. The woman of the house proceeded to boil a big pot of potatoes and share them with the men. Decades later, my grandfather related that this meal was the most memorable of his life. Perhaps a starving man will find gratitude in any meal.