The idea that maize and man co-opted one another in pursuit of world domination is not as new as some people seem to think. I’m reading “Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance” by Arturo Warman, translated by Nancy Westrate. The original Spanish edition dates to 1988 and the translation to 2003, and although some bits have undoubtedly been updated the one over-riding impression I have so far is that all indicators of corn’s global dominance are probably now even greater than they are in the book. But that’s not why I am blogging.
Rather, I am puzzled by a reference on page 7 to a crop of American origin called sesame. That brought me up short. Sesame, Sesamum indicum, is almost certainly Indian in origin. Fortunately, Warman, or Westrate, gives a Latin name, Amaranthus cruentus, and says that it is known as Alegria, or “joy”. That makes more sense. A. cruentus is one of the three amaranth species grown for its grain, which admittedly does look a little like sesame seed. And it is the one often known in English as red amaranth, for the flower (and flour?) colour of a group of varieties that was, apparently, used as an element of ritual throughout the Americas. It represented blood, and that may have been the reason colonial religious nuts attempted to ban its cultivation and use. ((“Communion wine is completely different, you dolt.”))
Is there, then, some reason why Warman and Westrate refer to it as sesame? A Spanish word, perhaps?
All this is especially interesting in view of later paragraphs dedicated to the original domestication site of corn, Old World or New. ((It is hard to realize that this was once a subject of discussion.)) Part of the evidence that scholars adduced in support of an Old World origin was linguistic, names such as Egyptian sorghum, Syrian grain, grain from Mecca, Indian wheat, Spanish wheat, Portuguese grain and, here in Italy, Gran Turco. What all of these have in common is the notion that maize comes from somewhere else, often self-contradictory, but that was enough to send Old World supporters into a frenzy. They simply could not bring themselves to believe that such a wonderful plant had been domesticated by the lowly creatures of the Americas.
And speaking of names, it came as another shock to learn that Teosinte, the ancestor of maize, gets its name from a Nahuatl word for “corn of the gods”. How many other foods of the gods are there, I wonder?
Perhaps they referred to it as sesame for the same reason that Europeans use “corn” to refer to many different grains.
A corn is a small seed. In many ag areas the dominant seed grain is called corn as a sort of short hand. Barley corn, wheat corn etc. John Barleycorn must die.
The word corn seems to be related to the word crop, which is a lump or swelling. Chickens have crops on their necks and people get crops when they are pummeled. Come a cropper.
Amaranth is an interesting semi-domesticated seed crop that has not been successfully bred to have good characteristics for mechanical harvest. It doesn’t mature uniformly and is subject to shatter and seed loss. It can be laboriously harvested by people to provide subsistence food. Work continues.
When we perfect the ag bots capable of human equivalent judgment and dexterity we’ll ask them to do the job. “They work on nights and weekends / and every holiday / They’ll settle down among us / and never go away”
I fear I failed to explain myself properly. I know about the lexical value of corn, and kernel, and maybe even quern. My question is this: Why did a pair of authors who are obviously sensitive to the ways in which food words can be misinterpreted use an inappropriate word — sesame — to describe a crop when a perfectly good phrase — grain amaranth — exists in English?
Do you know if the Spanish version has “sesamo”?
I don’t understand footnote 1. Amaranth had to do with celebrating Aztec mass human sacrifices, I would guess (but correct me if I’m wrong). Communion wine is about celebrating the victim, quite the opposite.
I don’t know what is in the Spanish version, alas.
Not that I want to go into detailed comparative theology, but wouldn’t you say that those who were sacrificed were also victims? And aren’t both cases the symbolic (some would say actual) ingestion of the blood of the victim?
True, there is an analogy between the symbolic acts, but in their respective contexts they point to opposite religious values. Participating with the victim or the perpetrator, that is quite a difference.
The conquistadores were quite clear about why they disliked the Aztec elite (especially human sacrifice). Their perceptions at this point have been confirmed by archaeological research. So I would guess that their aversion against amaranth is not based on mere stupidity.
If so much agrobiodiversity is eaten by the gods, perhaps we do need religion studies to understand it?