Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for an older episode
Speaker 1: of the show. This one is part one of our
Speaker 1: series on the Bean, which was a way weirder and
Speaker 1: spookier series than I think we expected it to be.
Speaker 1: All kinds of uh strange beliefs from the ancient world
Speaker 1: about beans come up, though I don't recall if they're
Speaker 1: in Part one or or later on, but anyway, we
Speaker 1: think it should be a great treat for you. This
Speaker 1: episode originally published on May eleven. Uh So, I hope
Speaker 1: you're ready for beans, because we are welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind production of My Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we're
Speaker 1: gonna be kicking off the first of a two part
Speaker 1: series where we're going to be looking at one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things in nature, the bean. Uh you might
Speaker 1: say the humble being. A child chanting in the playground
Speaker 1: might say the magical fruit, or wait, was it the
Speaker 1: magical fruit of the musical fruit? I think both variations
Speaker 1: are valid, and my own musical I've heard you're probably
Speaker 1: you you're you're probably combining the idea in your head
Speaker 1: with the idea of magic beans, which of course are
Speaker 1: sometimes sold to unspecting fairy tale characters. Oh yeah, Jack
Speaker 1: and the bean Stalk. There. You know, there's a thing
Speaker 1: about the magic beans and the Jack and the bean
Speaker 1: Stalk legend that I wonder about. I wonder if the
Speaker 1: beans have more significance than just being you know, magic
Speaker 1: anything that he could have planted in the ground. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess, of course it is biologically significant that their seeds, right,
Speaker 1: so they go in the ground and they grow up
Speaker 1: a vine or a stalk or something. But there's an
Speaker 1: interesting thing that I was becoming more and more aware of,
Speaker 1: uh as I was reading a book about beans that
Speaker 1: will talk out in this first part today, which is
Speaker 1: that historically and a lot of cultures, beans have associations
Speaker 1: with with poverty or with like sort of rustic or
Speaker 1: regular life. Whereas like the elites of a society might
Speaker 1: have more access to meet to get their protein, regular
Speaker 1: people to get protein, they get a lot of that
Speaker 1: protein from beans. So beans are often associated with being
Speaker 1: working class, or in the case of the Jack and
Speaker 1: the Beanstalk story, being somebody who's you know, just struggling
Speaker 1: to get along with regular life. Yeah. One thing that
Speaker 1: came out of of my part of the research here
Speaker 1: was that on one level, beans, beans are kind of boring.
Speaker 1: Beans are I mean, don't get me wrong, beans are
Speaker 1: I disagree, But I mean from a culinary standpoint, beans
Speaker 1: are exciting. I love beans. I think that you and
Speaker 1: I both I think both fans of Rancho Gordo beans
Speaker 1: free plug there. Um So, So beans, beans are wonderful.
Speaker 1: But but I think beans don't always have the most
Speaker 1: exciting place in various mythologies and stories because they do
Speaker 1: have this association with the common man. They have this
Speaker 1: association with um uh with sometimes the lower tiers of
Speaker 1: society in in a given culture, at least until the
Speaker 1: the upper um uh levels of society then rediscover it
Speaker 1: and and start getting curious about what the lower levels
Speaker 1: of society are cooking. Um So, at times it feels
Speaker 1: like you they don't get the respect that they deserve
Speaker 1: in terms of our our myth making and our story making.
Speaker 1: Like I think that's probably the reason that that we
Speaker 1: have this idea of the magic being right because it
Speaker 1: seems like a stupid thing to buy. Why would you
Speaker 1: buy a magic being a bean can't be magic beans
Speaker 1: a bean? And yet if we did not have beans,
Speaker 1: just imagine the state we would be in, Like beans
Speaker 1: are vitally important for feeding the planet. Yeah, that's absolutely right.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I want to talk about
Speaker 1: today is how it's not only true in the modern era,
Speaker 1: but is is true in a historical sense. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of different places at least I want to
Speaker 1: talk about where beans play probably a pivotal role in
Speaker 1: in leading to humanity as it is today. But yeah,
Speaker 1: in the Jack and the Beanstalk story, I kind of
Speaker 1: wonder if getting a bag of magic beans is like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just like an extremely common and not
Speaker 1: special food item. It's like getting a bag of magical bugles.
Speaker 1: But actually, I think it turns out that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of interest in beings strange ideas that people have,
Speaker 1: where people have connected the concepts of beings to two
Speaker 1: souls and magical beliefs and uh, and what a beans
Speaker 1: relationship to meet is as well as the beans relationship
Speaker 1: to our evolutionary history and uh, and early human civilization.
Speaker 1: And so we'll be exploring these things as we go on,
Speaker 1: but I want to start off today by looking at
Speaker 1: beans in early human civilization. Now, of course, beans are
Speaker 1: seeds biologically, that that is the role they play in
Speaker 1: a plant. There their seeds and the seeds that we
Speaker 1: call beans come from a family of flowering plants called
Speaker 1: fabasi that's spelled f A B A C E A E,
Speaker 1: which is one of those fun, you know, Latin things
Speaker 1: to say. But one of the main characteristics of these
Speaker 1: plants is that they have these distinctive pods which contain
Speaker 1: their seeds. And the seeds, of course are the beans
Speaker 1: we know. Now there are different genera of beans that
Speaker 1: that that sort of feed into the different culinary traditions
Speaker 1: around the world. You've got the fava beans. You've got
Speaker 1: the genus Faziola's, which is the sort of progenitor of
Speaker 1: many of the common beans we know today, like pinto
Speaker 1: beans and stuff. All all come from that family. Of course,
Speaker 1: you have soybeans, you have lentils, Yes, lentils are beans,
Speaker 1: and all these different beans have played important roles in
Speaker 1: the sort of nutritional package that has been developed along
Speaker 1: with different cultures of the world over the past few
Speaker 1: thousands of years. I was reading about this in a
Speaker 1: book that an e book that I downloaded called Beans
Speaker 1: a History by an author named Ken Albala or Albala
Speaker 1: A L. B. A. L A from Bloomsbury Publishing in
Speaker 1: and This author, Ken Albola, is a history professor at
Speaker 1: the University of the Pacific. It seems like he has
Speaker 1: written a lot of books about the history of food,
Speaker 1: and in this book he goes into a lot of
Speaker 1: depth about the often overlooked role of beings in the
Speaker 1: history of the human species. For example, we've spoken at
Speaker 1: length before about the importance of the domestication of grain
Speaker 1: crops leading to the rise of the first settled civilizations,
Speaker 1: but in that context, I don't think we ever really
Speaker 1: discussed the role of beans. Uh, the role of beings
Speaker 1: such as lentils, and Albala makes a lot of this.
Speaker 1: He has a whole chapter on the domestication of wild
Speaker 1: lentils and argues that they played an extremely important role
Speaker 1: in the nutritional foundation of human civilization. So I just
Speaker 1: want to read a selection from from one of his
Speaker 1: early chapters that gets into this. Elbolow Wrights quote The
Speaker 1: story of what is called the Neolithic Revolution has been
Speaker 1: told many times. The crucial role of wheat, goats, and
Speaker 1: sheep is always emphasized. Legumes, not just lentils, but chickpeas, vetches,
Speaker 1: and later pas somehow gets short shrift, but it is
Speaker 1: likely they play as great or even a greater role
Speaker 1: than meat and dairy in supplying protein to the growing population.
Speaker 1: This is a simple matter of efficiency. Per acre, lentils
Speaker 1: provide more calories than grazing cattle. Just as important, Rhizobium bacteria,
Speaker 1: which thrive on the root nodules of legumes, draw nitrogen
Speaker 1: from the atmosphere and fix it in the soil. They
Speaker 1: provide a kind of natural fertilizer which would have in
Speaker 1: turn made the wheat grow better. Furthermore, the stems and
Speaker 1: husks of the plant can be fed to cattle, which
Speaker 1: of course in turn provides more fertilizer. As in many
Speaker 1: early agricultural societies, the combination of plants works synergistically in
Speaker 1: the soil, and so does the combination of starches and
Speaker 1: legumes in the human diet. The amino acids lacking in
Speaker 1: lintels are supplied by grains and the lycene missing from
Speaker 1: the grains is supplied by the legumes. That is, a
Speaker 1: person can subsist mainly on this vegetable based diet, and
Speaker 1: it will support a large population in a way that
Speaker 1: gathering and hunting cannot. Without the beans, it is certainly
Speaker 1: less likely that these early civilizations would ever have arisen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That that that really summarizes it well. I think, yea,
Speaker 1: this this idea especially that it may be hard for
Speaker 1: for I guess some folks too to understand in the
Speaker 1: modern era when you when you look at our it's
Speaker 1: you know, the modern love of meat, and and often
Speaker 1: this idea that meat is something that you're going to
Speaker 1: consume not just every day, but like three times a day.
Speaker 1: You know, meat for breakfast, meat for lunch, meat for dinner. Um,
Speaker 1: when this is meat tea in the afternoon. Yeah, um yeah,
Speaker 1: the meat, coffee, etcetera. Um. But this was not this
Speaker 1: was certainly not always something that that was that could
Speaker 1: be obtained. I mean, and uh, and and and certainly
Speaker 1: you would have to have ways to fill that that
Speaker 1: protein gap in your diet. And and that's where beans
Speaker 1: come in. I mean, I think anyone who's work to
Speaker 1: limit the amount of meat in your diet. You you
Speaker 1: quickly realize how important beans are. Um, like my my, uh,
Speaker 1: my son, uh, you know, decided pretty pretty early on
Speaker 1: that he didn't know he basically wanted to be a
Speaker 1: pesketarian or a vegetarian. But for a little while he
Speaker 1: was like, I'm not sure I'm that into beans. And
Speaker 1: we're like, well, we got news for you if you're
Speaker 1: if if you're gonna you know, be a pesctarian or vegetarian. Uh,
Speaker 1: you need to love the being. You need to to
Speaker 1: realize how great beans are. And uh, and and understanding
Speaker 1: like they're varied ways to consume beans, you know. And
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of
Speaker 1: the Greatest Being dishes come from culinary traditions that have
Speaker 1: less emphasis on meat than than some other ones. Like, uh,
Speaker 1: I think you know how how well lentils are used
Speaker 1: in so much Indian cuisine, Like I love Indian lentils. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like if you take take any culinary tradition
Speaker 1: and you and you look at how they're preparing beans,
Speaker 1: you're you're gonna find some treasures in there as long
Speaker 1: as you dig deeply enough, you know. And it's um,
Speaker 1: because yeah, there's just there's just such a long tradition
Speaker 1: of of utilizing them and figuring out the ways to
Speaker 1: maximize their their flavor. You know, another way that beans
Speaker 1: are real maximizer type food is in efficiency maximization. Not
Speaker 1: just in terms of calories per acre of arable land,
Speaker 1: which Elbowa talked about in that section we just discussed.
Speaker 1: You know, there's there's more calorie density and growing a
Speaker 1: field of beans than in grazing cattle on that same
Speaker 1: amount of area. But also beans can be dried and
Speaker 1: stored in a state that is essentially indestructible. And this
Speaker 1: is another thing that I think people who have access
Speaker 1: to modern preservation, canning, refrigeration, freezers, things like this might
Speaker 1: not appreciate about how important it was in the ancient
Speaker 1: world to have foodstocks that would last you through the
Speaker 1: winter at the time when the harvest was not going on,
Speaker 1: you know, when when access to new fresh foods was
Speaker 1: was down to a minimum or down to nothing. You
Speaker 1: had to have something to live off of. And of course,
Speaker 1: you know, this comes into food traditions in a lot
Speaker 1: of different ways. Comes in with like pickling and fermentation
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff. But Also, beans are an
Speaker 1: amazing protein source because they can be dried and you
Speaker 1: can move them around, you can store them through the
Speaker 1: winter or even across more ultiple seasons. Uh that that
Speaker 1: it's an indispensable resource for that reason. Yeah, yeah, absolutely so,
Speaker 1: it's really it's really kind of a shame that I think,
Speaker 1: you know, particularly in American culinary history, at least of
Speaker 1: the last I mean, I guess we're getting out of
Speaker 1: it to to to a fair degree. But for a while,
Speaker 1: there is this idea like beans were a side item,
Speaker 1: and that's all beans were. But but beans are ultimately
Speaker 1: bigger than that. They're they're not just the little, you know,
Speaker 1: black or brown or white puddle next to your meat.
Speaker 1: You know, they're the thing that that that can can
Speaker 1: more than dominate the plate when the meat is not
Speaker 1: available or the meat is is just not utilized in
Speaker 1: the household. Do you think it helps to sort of
Speaker 1: lure people into being appreciation by giving them a little
Speaker 1: slightly more decadent versions of beings like the examples I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of our our falafel, which of course is being
Speaker 1: based that's based on chickpeas mashed up with certain spices
Speaker 1: and other ingredients, but then you deep fry it, of course,
Speaker 1: so it's going to be ice and crunchy and all
Speaker 1: that on the outside. Or another example I was thinking
Speaker 1: of is I mean, it is hard to beat the
Speaker 1: sort of decadent luxury of some refried beans, which are
Speaker 1: actually in many ways much like the mashed potatoes that
Speaker 1: Americans love on American Thanksgiving and stuff, where you know,
Speaker 1: the primary way of making these is you're gonna be
Speaker 1: mashing up this starchy thing with a bunch of fat.
Speaker 1: In the case of refried beans, it might be lard
Speaker 1: or it might be oil, kind of like the butter
Speaker 1: that you would mix up with your classic mashed potatoes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would absolutely agree with that. I mean, you can
Speaker 1: also say the same for a lot of being based
Speaker 1: imitation meats. You know that sometimes some of these in
Speaker 1: particular are not and they're not health food exactly, but
Speaker 1: they're they're really good as as long as you're not
Speaker 1: hanging too much on the meat Moniker in some cases.
Speaker 1: But I think some of the invitation meat today is
Speaker 1: it's gotten extremely good. I mean, it's it's to the
Speaker 1: point where I feel like someone would have a hard
Speaker 1: time guessing. Uh, you know, what's real and what is imitation? Um.
Speaker 1: But but I think the same goes for like for
Speaker 1: for tofu, for like soft tofu. Uh. You just present
Speaker 1: soft tofu playing to somebody and it might not win
Speaker 1: them over. But cut it up into cubes, um, fry
Speaker 1: it up with a pair of extra long chopsticks like
Speaker 1: I like to do. Put a copious amount of salt
Speaker 1: and pepper on those, and I feel like that should
Speaker 1: satisfy most appetites because you've got your your crunchy, you're
Speaker 1: soft in the middle, you're salty, maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: of spice to it if you put something else on it.
Speaker 1: You know. I think anybody who's like a big fan
Speaker 1: of like rich, big flavor, meaty stews and all that,
Speaker 1: give them some mapo tofu. I mean, you can't turn
Speaker 1: it down. It's amazing. Yeah, thank But actually I want
Speaker 1: to go deeper into history. So that's the role that
Speaker 1: Albula argues that beans played in the history of human civilization.
Speaker 1: I want to go farther back. Because I was reading
Speaker 1: a something I thought was very interesting. I came across
Speaker 1: this in a New York Times article from October of
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen by Nicholas st. Fleur called Colorado fossils show
Speaker 1: how mammals race to fill dinosaurs void. And this article
Speaker 1: was covering a fossil fine from Colorado from a place
Speaker 1: called Originally I think I was calling it Coral Bluffs,
Speaker 1: but I believe it's Corral Bluffs. Ceo r r A L.
Speaker 1: That's corral. Is that the word? Okay, okay, my cowboy
Speaker 1: bona fideys are not strong, but but I think that
Speaker 1: is what that is, which, anyway, are discussed in a
Speaker 1: paper that was published in twenty nineteen in the journal
Speaker 1: Science by License at All called Exceptional Continental Record of
Speaker 1: Biotic Recovery after the Cretaceous Paleo Gene mass Extinction. Now
Speaker 1: that extinction event reference there the Cretaceous paleo gene mass extinction.
Speaker 1: We we also sometimes shorten that to the KPg extinction.
Speaker 1: UM was a mass extinction roughly sixty six million years ago,
Speaker 1: probably caused in large part by a giant impact from space.
Speaker 1: The leading hypothesis is that that was driven by this
Speaker 1: impact that left what's today the cheek Schlob Crater in
Speaker 1: the Yucatan Peninsula. And this mass extinction, you know, we've
Speaker 1: talked about many times on the show before. It was,
Speaker 1: of course not the greatest mass extinction in Earth's history,
Speaker 1: but one of the greatest. It led to the extinction
Speaker 1: of the non avian dinosaurs and more broadly, roughly three
Speaker 1: quarters of the species on Earth. But of course this
Speaker 1: event is not just relevant to the dinosaurs who died
Speaker 1: in it, but it's highly relevant to us because in
Speaker 1: the ecological void left when dinosaurs were wiped out, suddenly
Speaker 1: there was a lot of room. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of room for another order of terrestrial animals to take
Speaker 1: over the space evacuated by the dead dinosaurs. Of course,
Speaker 1: that was the mammals, our ancestors. UH. And we've talked
Speaker 1: before about some of the interesting biological dynamics that were
Speaker 1: in play during this time. One of the things I
Speaker 1: remember us talking about was the role of fungus in
Speaker 1: allowing mammals to ascend during this period. I think this
Speaker 1: was covered in our episode on prototax I d s
Speaker 1: these giant uh, these giants potentially fungus, you know, stalks
Speaker 1: that would have been found hundreds of millions of years ago. UM.
Speaker 1: I remember us talking about a CBC documentary that was
Speaker 1: discussing how in the wake of the KPg extinction event.
Speaker 1: So of course the space impact would kick up tons
Speaker 1: of dust into the atmosphere that would darken the skies,
Speaker 1: and this would lead to tons tons of dead, decaying
Speaker 1: plant matter under this darkened sky. And so in this
Speaker 1: world of sort of darkened skies and dead decaying plant matter,
Speaker 1: this is a perfect invitation for fungi to thrive. And
Speaker 1: of course all of this fungus around would represent a
Speaker 1: threat to the survival of some of the remaining animals,
Speaker 1: but it and affect all animals equally because suddenly our
Speaker 1: mammalian ancestors, by having warm blooded bodies, would have much
Speaker 1: better protection against fungal infections than cold blooded animals such
Speaker 1: as the then dominant reptiles. It's a this this world
Speaker 1: is is interesting to try and imagine. It's kind of
Speaker 1: a so again, it's a world of of of rot
Speaker 1: and decay and fungus. It's a world of of of
Speaker 1: rats on the ascent uh it um. I'm tempted to
Speaker 1: compare it to the in in the the Warhammer fantasy setting.
Speaker 1: There's this chaos god that's uh this name Nergal, which
Speaker 1: I guess is you know, derived from Nergal, the the
Speaker 1: ancient deity that we've discussed recently on the Mespotamian. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And but anyway, this chaos god is a god of
Speaker 1: of decay and u and disease. But but often, more
Speaker 1: often than not, this symbology is that of decay and
Speaker 1: mushrooms and fungus. Uh. But then also occasionally these hordes
Speaker 1: of of of rats, like bipedal rats with with blades
Speaker 1: and such. So, uh, this would be a fitting time
Speaker 1: for for fans of of that faction. I think, I
Speaker 1: don't know about sword wielding rats. It must be a
Speaker 1: time of rats swordsman. But but but they're on the move,
Speaker 1: They're on the ascent, you know. So it's it's almost
Speaker 1: like the modern idea of rats taking up weapons and
Speaker 1: and and gaining our spot in the world. And I
Speaker 1: mean that's basically what's going on here. Like these these small,
Speaker 1: in many ways pitiful organisms when you compare them to
Speaker 1: the previous lords of the earth. Uh, they have this
Speaker 1: chance to rise up and take their spot, and they do.
Speaker 1: And we are we are the descendants of that that revolution. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because of this adaptation of having warm blooded bodies that
Speaker 1: would help fight off fungal infection. Like I actually found
Speaker 1: a quote that we featured in that previous episode. That
Speaker 1: was from our truro Casa Devol, who is a professor
Speaker 1: of public health at Johns Hopkins University, who said, quote,
Speaker 1: the reptiles are quite susceptible to fungal diseases. But your
Speaker 1: typical mammal, which maintains a temperature in the mid thirties
Speaker 1: or so, that would be celsius, creates a thermal exclusionary
Speaker 1: zone for fungi. So we have like the invisible armor.
Speaker 1: It's not a shell on the outside, it's not scales,
Speaker 1: we've got heat armor. But anyway, so this time that
Speaker 1: spelled doom or at least a suppression for many reptile
Speaker 1: or cold blooded species, gave gave an opportunity for mammals
Speaker 1: to really thrive. And so that's one way that the
Speaker 1: wake of the KPg extinction was a pivotal time for
Speaker 1: mammal ascendency. They were just suddenly all these opportunities. So
Speaker 1: some of these things would be opportunities for new ecological niches,
Speaker 1: new ways to get food that previously were monopolized by
Speaker 1: you know, better competitive species in the dinosaur clade, and
Speaker 1: it would be new habitats to explore and things like that. Also,
Speaker 1: no more dinosaurs eating you all the time, that's a plus.
Speaker 1: I was actually reading a Reuter's article by right named
Speaker 1: Will Dunham about the same research from the journal Science
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, and it's talking about the how mammals
Speaker 1: got bigger after the KPg extinction, and so talking about mammals,
Speaker 1: Dunham rights quote, within seven hundred thousand years of the
Speaker 1: mass extinction, their body mass had become one hundred times
Speaker 1: bigger than the mammals living immediately after the mass extinction,
Speaker 1: and so charting the increase is pretty amazing. Uh. To
Speaker 1: to read another section from the article here from Reuter's
Speaker 1: here quote the mammals that survived the asteroid were mainly
Speaker 1: small omnivores, the largest being the size of a rat
Speaker 1: and weighing about a pound or about half a kilogram.
Speaker 1: So here again we got rat world, right is you know,
Speaker 1: it's fungus all over the place, mold rat world, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Dead dinosaurs and then um. Within a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand years of the extinction event, mammals reached about
Speaker 1: thirteen pounds or six kilograms. By three hundred thousand years
Speaker 1: after the extinction, they got to fifty five pounds or
Speaker 1: with the first purely herbivorous mammalian species. By seven hundred
Speaker 1: thousand years after the asteroid, some mammals weighed more than
Speaker 1: a hundred and ten pounds or fifty rams. So this
Speaker 1: is talking about how like, you know, within like less
Speaker 1: than a million years, you've got mammals growing from from
Speaker 1: rat size to like wolf size. Yeah, I mean again
Speaker 1: swords and cloaks aside, it sounds like, yeah, uh so
Speaker 1: it's because of this extinction that we exist. This is
Speaker 1: an important thing to remember, like we are the descendants
Speaker 1: of these mammals. At some point, our ancestor you go
Speaker 1: back through your parents, and way way down the line
Speaker 1: we trace back to some kind of rat like creature
Speaker 1: that survived the KPg extinction. But one of the interesting
Speaker 1: things is that scientists don't have a whole lot of
Speaker 1: fossils from the time right after this mass extinction, at
Speaker 1: least not as many fossils as they would like to
Speaker 1: get a fully fleshed out picture of how the mammal
Speaker 1: world recovered after this been. And so this New York
Speaker 1: Times article in the Reuter's article that I've been talking
Speaker 1: about or about this paper from Science about a fossil
Speaker 1: cash discovered in Colorado that gives us more insight into
Speaker 1: the ecology and local mammal life from right after that time.
Speaker 1: It catalogs a bunch of different mammal species that are
Speaker 1: all kind of interesting, some growing to the size of
Speaker 1: like a like a prehistoric copy Bara. But one of
Speaker 1: the interesting things about this record is how it connects
Speaker 1: to the subject of beans, because this fossil site also
Speaker 1: can tell us a lot about what was going on
Speaker 1: with plants right around the same time, and the stages
Speaker 1: in which plants recovered after the Great Dying sixty six
Speaker 1: million years ago. So I want to read a section
Speaker 1: here from the New York Times article by st Fleur
Speaker 1: that the catalogs this progression of plants, so you've got
Speaker 1: the mass extinction and then quote, first came the ferns
Speaker 1: with their feather like leaves. They proliferated across the waste
Speaker 1: land for many hundreds of years to a couple of
Speaker 1: thousand years, paving the way for worists to rebound. Next,
Speaker 1: the palms paraded in, dominating the green scene for hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of years. Then around three hundred thousand years
Speaker 1: after the catastrophe, a diverse array of walnuts appeared that
Speaker 1: coincided with the jump in diversity and body size of
Speaker 1: herbivorous mammals, which suggests they were an important food source.
Speaker 1: We call that world the pecan pie world, said Ian Miller,
Speaker 1: a paleobotanist at the Denver Museum of Natural Science. He
Speaker 1: added that this epic also coincided with a warming period
Speaker 1: in the fossil record, which could indicate that a shifting
Speaker 1: climate played a role in the development of plants and
Speaker 1: animals following the extinction event. But then it gets to
Speaker 1: another interesting plant development after this discovery, the world's first
Speaker 1: known bean pod. So now I want to read a
Speaker 1: sections from this article published in Science. This again is
Speaker 1: by license at all and the author's here right quote.
Speaker 1: The corral Bloo section provides the oldest known occurrence of
Speaker 1: the legumento say or being family, represented by fossil seed
Speaker 1: pods and leaflets, dated sixty five point three five million
Speaker 1: years ago. The oldest previously recognized legume is based on
Speaker 1: wood and leaflets from early Paleocene rocks of Argentina, whereas
Speaker 1: the earliest legumes seed pods are not recognized until the
Speaker 1: late paleo scene roughly fifty eight million years ago of Columbia.
Speaker 1: Our discovery supports a nearly synchronous first appearance of legumes
Speaker 1: in North America and southern South America, a rapid diversification
Speaker 1: for the group in the earliest paleo scene, and their
Speaker 1: apparent origination in the western hemisphere. So to summarize, they
Speaker 1: found this bean pod. I think actually they talk about how, um,
Speaker 1: the record of this bean pod was discovered by a
Speaker 1: high school student who was helping excavate the site. And
Speaker 1: I believe there's a documentary that you can find that
Speaker 1: PBS did about this fossil record dicovery and uh that
Speaker 1: might get into more detail about the discovery process. But
Speaker 1: this bean ancestor was dated to something like seven hundred
Speaker 1: thousand years after the mass extinction event, and it was
Speaker 1: also timed in synchronization with this warming pulse in the
Speaker 1: Earth's atmosphere as well as, as we pointed out, earlier
Speaker 1: to the appearance of wolf sized mammals. So the authors
Speaker 1: here suggest that, well, maybe these beans were helping to
Speaker 1: provide calorie dense food sources to these mammals as they're
Speaker 1: getting bigger. This is not known for sure, but this
Speaker 1: seems like a quite reasonable hypothesis to be explored more. Uh.
Speaker 1: Dr Miller, who I quoted earlier, said, quote, we liken
Speaker 1: them to the protein bars of the ancient world. So
Speaker 1: the appearance of these first beans, this bean pot ancestor,
Speaker 1: appears to be time to a sudden shift upward in
Speaker 1: mammalian body mass. And this makes it look at least
Speaker 1: possible and worthy of further explanation that protein reach beans
Speaker 1: were a nutritional driver for mammal ascendency. So beans were
Speaker 1: the protein bars, and then these various mammals they were
Speaker 1: the lift they were the power lifters, they were they
Speaker 1: were the ones putting on mass. Okay, well at least
Speaker 1: potentially well right, Well, what we've established so far is
Speaker 1: just this interesting correlation in the appearance of the of
Speaker 1: these species. We don't know for sure that like what
Speaker 1: was eating what, but uh but yeah, it definitely seems
Speaker 1: worth looking into more, because you know, as I think
Speaker 1: I've established by this point, I'm all in favor of
Speaker 1: being propaganda whatever, whatever makes beans look good than now.
Speaker 1: Next year I did have a section about beans and flatulence,
Speaker 1: but I'm actually thinking maybe I'm gonna save that for
Speaker 1: part two. Yeah, maybe we can hold that and uh
Speaker 1: and release it in the next episode. I think that's
Speaker 1: a good idea. So I think I'm just gonna clench
Speaker 1: down and see if we we can save that for
Speaker 1: the next one, give you incentive to return. But next
Speaker 1: time we're gonna be talking about all kinds of crazy
Speaker 1: being stuff, beans and souls, beans and farts. It's going
Speaker 1: to be it'll be a blast. So but wait, we're
Speaker 1: not done yet. No, no, no, We've got We've got
Speaker 1: more stuff to discuss here, more early early being history.
Speaker 1: Um are our attempts to understand early being history and uh,
Speaker 1: I think a little bit of magic and mythology related
Speaker 1: to beans, so as usual for for all things ancient.
Speaker 1: One of my first stops in looking at this topic
Speaker 1: was to start flipping around in the seventy grade Inventions
Speaker 1: of the Ancient World. That's the book by anthropologist Brian M. Fagan.
Speaker 1: But the different sections of it, uh, he'll work with
Speaker 1: with other experts, and in in the section dealing with
Speaker 1: ancient cereal crops, he worked with Stephen Mythin, professor of
Speaker 1: prehistory at the University of Reading. And this mostly uh,
Speaker 1: mostly focused and focused on various cereal crops. But there's
Speaker 1: a really good part of this that deals with um
Speaker 1: with the domestication of beings and other plants in the
Speaker 1: America's and they point out that there there seemed to
Speaker 1: have been two centers of plant domestication in the America's.
Speaker 1: First of all, there was the There was the the Andes,
Speaker 1: and this would have focused mostly on keenoa, but also
Speaker 1: on the potato. And then in Central Mexico you have
Speaker 1: that trifecta of maize or corn, beans and squash. Now,
Speaker 1: in both of these cases, the domestications were undertaken by
Speaker 1: unsettled mobile peoples. And we've touched on this before about
Speaker 1: the idea. You know, sometimes we have this sort of
Speaker 1: this rough, simple version in our head of of what
Speaker 1: it means for people to stop moving around and start
Speaker 1: growing crops. You know, the idea is like, should we
Speaker 1: hunt and gather anymore? No, let's just settle here and
Speaker 1: grow some beans. It it doesn't seem to quite work
Speaker 1: like that in history, right that it seems hard to
Speaker 1: imagine a scenario when somebody who like grew up as
Speaker 1: a hunter gatherer was just like, okay, now we're planting crops.
Speaker 1: You know, it seems like there's a more gradual transition
Speaker 1: of uh, sort of the slow partial domestication of wild
Speaker 1: grains and crops. Overtime, this leads to the realization that
Speaker 1: this could become a full time living Yeah, And ultimately
Speaker 1: I think this is a more realistic um we have
Speaker 1: looking at it and understanding it, because otherwise, if you
Speaker 1: if you have that that that full stop and then
Speaker 1: shift to plant domestication or animal domestication, I feel like
Speaker 1: there's a gap there in the in in our brains,
Speaker 1: and then it's a gap that some of us may
Speaker 1: want to insert aliens in. You know, you start thinking like, well,
Speaker 1: how did we How did we get the idea to
Speaker 1: grow and domesticate beans or turn wheat into flour um.
Speaker 1: Something must have told us how to do it. There
Speaker 1: must have been some magic flame or some gimmi god
Speaker 1: or some sort of alien being. And of course there
Speaker 1: are there are plenty of tremendous myths and folk tales
Speaker 1: that kind of deal with that exact situation, And we'll
Speaker 1: get to a couple of examples in a bit. You know,
Speaker 1: those stories are good enough that you don't need to
Speaker 1: make up a new one. That's right, you don't need
Speaker 1: to say, oh, it's aliens that gave us farming. Alright.
Speaker 1: So wild beings grow throughout Central America, and a cluster
Speaker 1: of wild beans around Guadalajara seemed to be the common
Speaker 1: ancestor of the common domesticated being that we mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: This was what a Faziolus vulgaris. And this species comes
Speaker 1: in in many different forms, including red beans, pinto beans,
Speaker 1: and kidney beans. A lot of the beans weet today
Speaker 1: are our variations on faziolas. Faziolus the genus more broadly,
Speaker 1: and Faziolis vulgaris the common being. Now you might wonder, well,
Speaker 1: what what's the difference between between this wonderful being and
Speaker 1: the various wild beans. What's the main difference. Well, it
Speaker 1: has to do with how the bean pods split open
Speaker 1: in the wild. The bean pod just eventually splits open,
Speaker 1: spills the seeds so that maybe it maybe spread, you know,
Speaker 1: by largely by various organisms. But this was gradually bred
Speaker 1: out of domesticated beans, as people repeatedly picked bean pods
Speaker 1: that were less prone to splitting apart. And it's unsure
Speaker 1: to what degree this was intentional or accidental. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe mixes of both at different times, but the results
Speaker 1: were domesticated, being species that could not spread their seeds
Speaker 1: without the aid of human harvesters. Interesting, now, you might wonder, Okay,
Speaker 1: when does this take place? Well, Fagan and Mythn wrote
Speaker 1: that that the dating at the least of the time
Speaker 1: of their writing was patchy at best, uh, and they
Speaker 1: did not provide a rough estimate for the for these
Speaker 1: beans in Central America, though the squash seems to have
Speaker 1: undergone biological domestic change by UM hundred BC and maze
Speaker 1: bytwo hundred BC. Quinoa, again in the south, dates roughly
Speaker 1: to five thousand BC. I love this kind of puzzle
Speaker 1: in human history, of like putting together what kind of
Speaker 1: like human activity could have led to the like changes
Speaker 1: in the evolution of a plant species like this that,
Speaker 1: like without even necessarily intending to Yeah, yeah, what sorts
Speaker 1: of choices be they? You know, is very direct choices
Speaker 1: or just sort of sort of you know, uh, gradual
Speaker 1: selections take place by humans interacting with the natural world. Now,
Speaker 1: I think you promised me some bean myths from ancient
Speaker 1: meso America, didn't you. Yes, yes, so so again, like
Speaker 1: we said, it doesn't need to be that gap in
Speaker 1: which you insert the divine. But it's it's often it's
Speaker 1: it's often very interesting and entertaining and uh and and
Speaker 1: and also you know the sacred when you have uh
Speaker 1: have a god slip into that role. And indeed, there's
Speaker 1: a wonderful Aztec myth that I came across about the
Speaker 1: bringing of grains and seeds into the human diet, which
Speaker 1: I read about in Aztec and Maya Myths by Carl Tobb.
Speaker 1: This is from UM. Now, now I should be clear
Speaker 1: that there are several different myths about the origins of maize,
Speaker 1: in particular because maze or corn is just vitally important
Speaker 1: uh to uh to Central American cultures, and at times
Speaker 1: there ascribed as a kind of sacred flesh or the
Speaker 1: precursor to human flesh or the flesh of the gods.
Speaker 1: Maze is life. But beans are nice to beans, maybe
Speaker 1: less flashy as maze or corn, I feel, and I
Speaker 1: feel like that's even the case today. You know, it's
Speaker 1: Children of the Corn by Stephen King None children of
Speaker 1: the beans. Um Like maze is maybe just a little
Speaker 1: sexier uh than beans, But the beans are vitally important too,
Speaker 1: and so they get looped into some of these myths
Speaker 1: as well. Well, I mean this goes back to something
Speaker 1: that I was talking about when I read that section
Speaker 1: from ken Albola earlier about how I think he was
Speaker 1: talking about some of the domestication of lentils in particular,
Speaker 1: but you know, he talks about how together the grains
Speaker 1: and the and the beans form a nutritional package that
Speaker 1: supplies things that the other doesn't have and it doesn't
Speaker 1: have or doesn't have in the same abundance. So the
Speaker 1: example here was that combining starches and legumes, where the
Speaker 1: amino acids that are not in the lentils are supplied
Speaker 1: by the grains, but the lycene that's missing from the
Speaker 1: grains is supplied by the legumes. And that when you
Speaker 1: have these different crops coming together to form a sort
Speaker 1: of like diet package, they fill the gaps of the other. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you need them both, even if one is if
Speaker 1: one takes on slightly more sacred connotations. And the myth
Speaker 1: making Now this myth in particular was recorded in Legends
Speaker 1: of the Suns, and this was found in the fifteen
Speaker 1: fifty eight Codex Chimo Popoca, and this was written in
Speaker 1: the novel language. So in this myth, I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna mostly just summarizing here. So humans have been created,
Speaker 1: and I'm and I'm not entirely sure from the context
Speaker 1: if if IF like a lot or most of the
Speaker 1: humans are actual infants in this scenario. But the gods
Speaker 1: are unsure what the humans are going to eat, Like, okay,
Speaker 1: the humans exist now, but they have to eat something.
Speaker 1: So the gods go out in search. The aztect gods
Speaker 1: go out in search of things humans can consume. And
Speaker 1: during his own search, while we have a familiar character here,
Speaker 1: we have Quetzalkdal, the plume serpent god that we've discussed
Speaker 1: on previous episodes. Um, he's involved in the search. He
Speaker 1: goes out looking for sustenance for the new humans, and
Speaker 1: he comes across a red ant carrying a single grain
Speaker 1: of maze and he realizes, well, this might be the
Speaker 1: very grain that humans need in order to survive. So
Speaker 1: the Plume, the serpent god sweeps, you know, sweeps down
Speaker 1: from from the sky and he he just starts talking
Speaker 1: to the aunt and he says, hey, that's that's some wonderful,
Speaker 1: wonderful foods you got there on your back can you
Speaker 1: tell me where you got it? And the aunt says no,
Speaker 1: which I which I love Aunt defiance, Yeah, but quetzal
Speaker 1: Cotal is insistent. So the Aunt finally reveals the source
Speaker 1: of this and many other precious grains, including beans, and
Speaker 1: it's the interior vault of Mount tona Catptl, the Mountain
Speaker 1: of Sustenance. So Quetzalcota is impressed by this, transforms his
Speaker 1: own body into that of a black ant and he
Speaker 1: infiltrates the Mountain of Sustenance, and indeed he finds it
Speaker 1: just feel it's like this hollowed out vault and it's
Speaker 1: just filled with seeds and grains. Uh, there's maze there,
Speaker 1: their beings um. So he steals some of the maze,
Speaker 1: brings it back, and the other gods they take the maze,
Speaker 1: they chew it up, and they feed it to these
Speaker 1: human infants to make them strong. So already, I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting that instead of some demigod or hero stealing
Speaker 1: a secret resource from the gods and bringing it to humanity,
Speaker 1: we instead having we we seem to have something more
Speaker 1: like a god stealing a secret resource from nature itself,
Speaker 1: from this treasure trove hidden within the mountain. It almost
Speaker 1: it almost makes me wonder if this, uh, this in
Speaker 1: some way inspired the hobbit. Well, yeah, it when you
Speaker 1: think of of of mountain depths filled with riches, you
Speaker 1: do kind of think of the dwarves. But I also
Speaker 1: wonder if it, you know, if it is also ultimately
Speaker 1: telling about trends and Mesoamerican um religion and considerations of
Speaker 1: the natural environment. You know that that that that that
Speaker 1: ultimately that nature sort of stands apart from the gods
Speaker 1: to a certain extent. Oh that's interesting. So you're saying,
Speaker 1: like not identifying the gods with nature. The gods are
Speaker 1: not the forces of nature, but another thing like humanity
Speaker 1: that sort of must wrestle with the forces of nature,
Speaker 1: maybe in some ways to a certain degree. That though,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, you do have gods that are
Speaker 1: very much associated with aspects of nature as well in
Speaker 1: these systems, so uh, you know, I wouldn't say it's
Speaker 1: a clear cut division. So anyway, Quetzalcodal took on the
Speaker 1: form of an aunt brought out like a few pieces
Speaker 1: of corn to help feed humanity. But clearly this is
Speaker 1: not going to hold up in the long run. So
Speaker 1: what they need to do is they need to bring
Speaker 1: the Mountain of sustenance to the humans. So Quetzalcode slings
Speaker 1: a rope around the mountain and tries to drag it
Speaker 1: to the human nursery camp. But it's too big because
Speaker 1: it's a mountain. Another plan is needed, so they decided
Speaker 1: to bring in a little a little counseling on this,
Speaker 1: and they turned to Oximoco and sit bac Tonal. This
Speaker 1: is the first human couple and the goddess of night
Speaker 1: and the god of astrology and calendars, though I think
Speaker 1: both of them are considered gods of astrology and calendars. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that sounds like that they would have some wisdom
Speaker 1: or maybe predictive power. Yeah. Yeah. And so these two
Speaker 1: individuals divine that they must turn to another god for
Speaker 1: help to help them plunder the riches of the mountain.
Speaker 1: The diseased god and future sun deity Nana Hudson, whose
Speaker 1: whose name apparently means full of sores. That's a good
Speaker 1: god name. This is funny that we were just talking
Speaker 1: about Nercle earlier with that sort of disease god. Yeah. Well, um,
Speaker 1: it's it's slightly different. I think that this god is
Speaker 1: not necessarily a manifestation of disease. But is he himself
Speaker 1: is diseased and then is faded to become a sun deity.
Speaker 1: But yeah, again we see this kind of element of
Speaker 1: plague and disease, if we it's tempting to want to
Speaker 1: compare that to this this history of of mold world
Speaker 1: and the and the rise of the bean and the rat.
Speaker 1: So anyway, um U Nana Hudson moves in and with
Speaker 1: the aid of blue, white, yellow and red play locks
Speaker 1: the directional gods of the storms, um Nana Hudson breaks
Speaker 1: open this the Mountain of sustenance. The grains spill out,
Speaker 1: and then the taie locks. They gather up the maze
Speaker 1: the beans other culinary treasures from the depths of the mountain,
Speaker 1: and they dispense them to the people. Oh you know,
Speaker 1: I I love this for multiple reasons. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is just a great story, but also there's a certain
Speaker 1: kind of plausibility to it that uh that you know,
Speaker 1: is it's not just the sort of myth logic of
Speaker 1: breaking open a mountain full that's a corny copy of
Speaker 1: food that can then feed everyone. I mean, as we've
Speaker 1: talked about again with like grains and beans, A really
Speaker 1: wonderful thing about these types of foods is that they
Speaker 1: can be stored and transported in dried form, unlike a
Speaker 1: lot of other foods. And because of this quality that
Speaker 1: they can be stored and transported dry with their nutritional
Speaker 1: content intact in order to be resurrected later through cooking. Uh.
Speaker 1: They they have so much, so much sort of like
Speaker 1: versatility as a civilization founding food source than a lot
Speaker 1: of other types of food would have foods that generally
Speaker 1: need to be uh preserved in some way specially or
Speaker 1: kept fresh or something like that. But also because of this,
Speaker 1: like they remind me more of the physical treasures that
Speaker 1: you would see in other types of stories where there's
Speaker 1: a mountain full of gold coins or something, and here
Speaker 1: it's like you can have dried grains, literal beans or grains. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: Like this is the true, the true larger worth rating here. Um.
Speaker 1: I also love the idea of the calendar gods being
Speaker 1: involved of then in cracking it open, because ultimately, like
Speaker 1: being able to being people of the calendar aids you
Speaker 1: in the domestication of plants and in the management of
Speaker 1: your crops and your ability to you know, to know
Speaker 1: when to plant, when to harvest, when to seal away,
Speaker 1: and then when to uh you know, bring it back
Speaker 1: and plant once more. That is interesting. I didn't make
Speaker 1: that connection. Yeah, okay, well, I think maybe we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to call part one there. But we've got so
Speaker 1: much more interesting stuff to talk about. Next time, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about beans and souls, ancient religious beliefs
Speaker 1: about beans from other parts of the world. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about soybeans, which yes they're also beans. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's going to be the bee's knees. So join
Speaker 1: us again next time. That's right. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you would like to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind, maybe some of our past treatments
Speaker 1: of food related topics like tomatoes for example. Uh, you
Speaker 1: can find all of those in the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind podcast feed. You'll find that wherever you get
Speaker 1: your pot casts. We have our our core science episodes
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have artifact episodes on Wednesday's
Speaker 1: Listener Mail on Mondays, and on Fridays, we do uh
Speaker 1: weird House Cinema, which is uh not so science e
Speaker 1: and more about just us geeking out over some some
Speaker 1: weird movie from the past. Huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for
Speaker 1: the future, or just to say hello, you can email
Speaker 1: us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind is production of I Heart Radio.
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