The Origins of Corn & Bananas

[SeekinTruth]

Re: The Origins of Corn

Thanks for all the posts here, this is very interesting!

Yeah, illustrates it all very well, Belibaste. Thanks for finding and posting that excerpt.

And what about bananas? Funny that many of the same things that apply to corn apply to bananas as well, AND they even have similar morphology.

I don't know all that much about bananas, but I remember reading 15 years ago or more that they are one of the least diversified forms of plant life and it wouldn't take much at all for bananas to go extinct because of that (like a widespread disease for example). So, if I'm understanding correctly, if it wasn't for humans, bananas would cease to exist just like corn?

I remember reading the thing about bananas in Max Igan's book, Earth's forbidden secrets, years ago. _http://thebiggestsecretsoftheworld.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/banana-fruit-that-really-should-not.html

Somebody has copy/pasted it into a blog here, though it seems like it's not all factual:

Most people are completely unaware of this fact but there is a fruit that is eaten by millions of people all around the world everyday that is quite remarkable and in all reality, simply shouldn’t exist. I’m talking of course, about the banana. Bananas are actually the most mysterious fruit in the world because bananas have no seeds and what makes this even more mysterious is the fact that they are found in almost every country in the world.


Now that may not sound so odd at first but let me fully explain this enigma to you: Firstly, banana plants are not trees; they are actually a perennial herb. The trunk of the plant is really nothing more than the plants outer leaves. The real stem of the plant doesn’t actually become visible until it pushes out through the top to produce the large purple flower that will eventually develop into the fruit. Then, having finished its perennial reproductive cycle, the plant dies. The problem here, is that in the reproductive cycle of the banana, seeds are completely absent from the mature fruit! A new ‘seedling’ (known as a ‘sucker’) can only ever be generated from a piece of the plants rootstock and yet bananas are found in almost most every place on earth, even on quite remote and isolated islands.


How in the world did they all get there?


The seeds certainly weren’t carried across the oceans by prevailing winds. To fully appreciate this anomaly first consider that the only other seedless plants that exist anywhere in the world are things like seedless grapes, naval oranges and the many genetically modified varieties of commercial vegetables that can now be purchased, the point is, any other seedless plants that exist, anywhere in the world, are all that way because they have genetically modified!

And yet here we have the humble banana, which is also the only food in existence that contains exactly the correct requirements of vitamins and minerals for mans metabolism completely. It is the only food that man can live on healthily, by itself, with complete nutrition, it is found all over the world and yet we have no knowledge of how it could possibly have come into being. It seems highly improbable that the worldwide distribution of a seedless fruit that is perfectly tailored for sustaining man would have just somehow ‘happened.’

It is extremely unlikely for such a plant to have ever been produced by nature all on its own and many people believe that somehow, somewhere, sometime, someone in our far distant past genetically engineered bananas into the widely dispersed and remarkably nutritious plant that we find everywhere in such abundance to day.


These people cite that bananas are living daily proof of an ancient culture that spanned the entire globe in remote pre-history. Botanists also now tentatively agree that the spread of the banana plant appears to have radiated outward from the Pacific region.

The Banana plant incidentally, is not actually a fruit or a vegetable, but it does reach a height of around 30 feet at maturity which makes it the Worlds largest herb and the tallest plant in existence that does not have a woody trunk.

I don't think it's very accurate to say "And yet here we have the humble banana, which is also the only food in existence that contains exactly the correct requirements of vitamins and minerals for mans metabolism completely. It is the only food that man can live on healthily, by itself, with complete nutrition, it is found all over the world and yet we have no knowledge of how it could possibly have come into being. It seems highly improbable that the worldwide distribution of a seedless fruit that is perfectly tailored for sustaining man would have just somehow ‘happened.’" First he starts out with vitamins and minerals and next thing he says is complete nutrition. What about the most important macronutrient: Fat? Besides very many minerals and quite a few vitamins are fat soluble and will not be able to be absorbed and utilized without the presence of fat at the time of consumption. So this puts a big doubt in my mind for this claim. Besides even to get the requirement of vitamins and minerals in the banana AND the daily calories, you would have to eat so many bananas that would translate to crazy amounts of sugar.

By the way, that article I read about the unusually low variability of bananas was in a mainstream publication, I think it might have been New York Times Magazine (a Sunday supplement to the newspaper) in the late 1990's.

Humans have quite literally become farmed, and as we know it goes well beyond our physical means of survival. It seems we're quite content with it as long as we get our "food, stability, and amenity". Unfortunately for us even if those things are false. But how would a domesticated animal know differently?

Fascinating, Renaissance. Thanks for sharing those thoughts.

It’s a partnership, and one that worked out well for both parties until factory-farming.

Hmm, I wonder if she would see partner in some reptilian that comes to slice and dice her to feed on her.

We automatically think of domestication as something we do to other species, but it makes just as much sense to think of it as something that certain plants and animals have done to us, a clever evolutionary strategy for advancing their own interests.

Yes, they wanted to be eaten like we want to be eaten so our species could be spread through cosmos to be food for predatory species.

I think you might have missed the main point, Corvinus. In/from an STS world/perpective, it IS a kind of "partnership." As the C's have said, we WANTED increased physicality, a desire based imbalance, that led to our "partnership" with Higher Density STS. And like Gurdjieff said about conscious evil i.e. higher density STS, after all it makes the process of evolution "more interesting." It's all a natural development of aligning with STS that we became their "food source."

 

[H-KQGE]

Re: The Origins of Corn

The eighth characteristic was that of voluntary confinement. Humans seem to be bound with voluntary shackles to the social system that provides us food, stability, and amenity. For example, no matter how often global environmental problems are discussed, only solutions that do not threaten to slow the current economic growth ever appear. This is because we do not wish to relinquish the system that guarantees our present standard of living and comfort. And even if it means being bound by the system, we want to continue living, in our hearts, under its influence.

As described above, almost every characteristic of animal domestication can also be applied to the people living inside contemporary civilization. Through domesticating ourselves like cattle, people began civilization. With this, we have come to bear the burden of both the comforts and sorrows of domesticated animals.

Humans have quite literally become farmed, and as we know it goes well beyond our physical means of survival. It seems we're quite content with it as long as we get our "food, stability, and amenity". Unfortunately for us even if those things are false. But how would a domesticated animal know differently?

Yeah, reminds me of this:

The following winter was spent on schemes of the most salutary kind. To induce a people, hitherto scattered, uncivilized and therefore prone to fight, to grow pleasurably inured to peace and ease, Agricola gave private encouragement and official assistance to the building of temples, public squares and private mansions. He praised the keen and scolded the slack, and competition to gain honour from him was as effective as compulsion. Furthermore, he trained the sons of the chiefs in the liberal arts and expressed a preference for British natural ability over the trained skill of the Gauls. The result was that in place of distaste for the Latin language came a passion to command it. In the same way, our natural dress came into favour and the toga was everywhere to be seen. And so the Britons were gradually led on to the amenities that make vice agreeable - arcades, baths and sumptuous banquets.They spoke of such novelties as "civilization", when really they were a feature of enslavement.

Remarks of Cornelius Tacitus about the Roman Raj in Britain. (From page 113-114, "High Strangeness" - Laura Knight Jadczyk)

So from then, until now, the bread and circuses "razzle dazzle" ("bright lights big city") just keeps on rolling. Thanks for the great post. (and the somewhat creepy & unsettling video!)

 

[Muxel]

Annuals serve their purpose when the land has been devastated somehow; they pave the way for the return of the perennials. (Heard about this from Lierre Keith.) Can it be supposed that an ancient worldwide cometary cataclysm ablated the land and left nothing but newly sprouting annuals for the survivors to eat? Could electrophonic effects have toyed with the DNA of the seeds as they lay dormant in the earth so that a virulent new breed of grass, undiscriminating in their greed for carbon, emerged simultaneously?

Or does corn's affinity for carbon-13 suggest an extraterrestrial origin - seeds that were brought by comets?

Q: (L) How did they physically go about performing this act? What was the mechanism of this event, the nuts and bolts of it?

A: DNA core is as yet undiscovered enzyme relating to carbon. Light waves were used to cancel the first ten factors of DNA by burning them off. At that point, a number of physical changes took place including knot at top of spine. Each of these is equally reflected in the ethereal.

 

[trendsetter37]

Besides very many minerals and quite a few vitamins are fat soluble and will not be able to be absorbed and utilized without the presence of fat at the time of consumption.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought minerals (especially the ones our bodies use) were mostly water soluble? However I do agree that the sugar content of the banana alone would hinder uptake of minerals which could thus lead to other chronic issues. Sorry if this is besides the point.

I definitely don't see how he gets off at putting the banana on a nutritional pedestal like he did.

 

[SeekinTruth]

Besides very many minerals and quite a few vitamins are fat soluble and will not be able to be absorbed and utilized without the presence of fat at the time of consumption.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I thought minerals (especially the ones our bodies use) were mostly water soluble? However I do agree that the sugar content of the banana alone would hinder uptake of minerals which could thus lead to other chronic issues. Sorry if this is besides the point.

I definitely don't see how he gets off at putting the banana on a nutritional pedestal like he did.

Hmm. Now that you mention it, I should have said some minerals. When I think about it, it's calcium and magnesium, although I've come across conflicting information about magnesium over a couple of decades. Also, I may be incorrect in saying "fat soluble" when it comes to the minerals, as even those are obviously water soluble. What I meant was that we can't utilize them in the absence of fat consumed at the same time. I know there are some others (minerals), but I can't think of which ones right now. I might take a look into it if I have some time in the near future. Anyone else know which minerals need to be consumed along with fat for utilization/bioavailability off the top of their heads?

 

[Anthony]

Bananas are radioactive?

http://www.omg-facts.com/Animals/Bananas-Are-Radioactive/18509

 

[Renaissance]

Annuals serve their purpose when the land has been devastated somehow; they pave the way for the return of the perennials. (Heard about this from Lierre Keith.)

Do you have a reference where she said that? She spoke about the unsustainability of annual monocrops, but in skimming through it I didn't see anything about annuals supporting perennial growth. It seems the opposite to me, although I only know a little about annuals. Annuals have rapid life cycles and as such take larger amounts of nutrients from the soil, and then die off within a year leaving the soil bare. They seem to be 'takers' in a sense. Perennials establish strong root systems which helps with topsoil growth as well as creating a better biodiversity in the soil and invites herbivores to 'eat them'. It could be said herbivores actually prune perennial grasses, which when done in natural intensive cycles allows the grass to grow stronger roots and invites more growth in turn. In the US there used to be herds of herbivores that were incredible in their size. They would move from region to region creating a periodic disturbance that would rejuvenate the land. Lierre Keith mentions Joel Salatan in her book (as does Pollan), and his Polyface farm is a good example of sustainable farming where he has implemented these symbiotic relationships found in nature onto the farm. He's one of the popular faces of the movement, and there are others who are doing many interesting things too. For example Allan Savory has been doing this work for over 40 years to stop desertification. Using just cows and controlled grazing to mimic how the herds would pass through land, he transforms deserts to grassland. This video presentation covers some of these concepts and more:

How Grassfed Beef Will Save the World

http://<iframe width="420" height="...pI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[Z...]

I have long had the feeling that all grains, or maybe agriculture as a whole might have been introduced by 4D STS forces. Because agriculture effectively terminated the hunter-gatherer societies and this also may parallel the rise of the psychopaths. A psychopath may have limited survival chances in a group of hunter-gatherers, where everyone has to pull his weight and aberrant personality traits become a danger to the survival of the whole group. However agriculture by necessity imposes a hierarchy - those who have, and the other who don't. Agriculture lets people amass wealth and with that comes the need of protecting this wealth agains the have-nots - and we are well on our way down the path that got us where we are.

This is my hypothesis as well...

Hunter-gatherers who lived in harmony with their environment never had a need for large fortified communities. Once wheat constrained humans to markedly more sedentary lifestyles, they were no longer able to rely on their usual hide-and-seek strategy when faced with enemies. A large group is far more se- cure than its members could be in multiple smaller groups. The result of devoting time, effort and resources to defending your- self will not just make you feel more secure, it will inevitably make your neighbours feel less secure. Perhaps, this would go some way towards explaining the driving forces behind modern society, with its capacity for brutal expansionism on a massive scale?

There is also some evidence that increased consumption of carbohydrates changed the sexual cycle of women and increased the frequency of ovulation which ultimately led to overpopulation of the planet to our planet's overlords of entropy delight.

and regarding corn

According to Aztec mythology, maize was brought to this world by Quetzalcoatl and is associated with the group of stars known commonly today as the Pleiades. Cultivation of this grain in pre-Columbian America was very often connected with gruesome human sacrifice rituals to appease Centeotl – the Corn God.

 

[Pierre]

Annuals serve their purpose when the land has been devastated somehow; they pave the way for the return of the perennials. (Heard about this from Lierre Keith.)

Do you have a reference where she said that?

I think this comes from Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth p.31-32:

The key to full-fledged agriculture is the annual grasses. If you want to understand ten thousand years of human-wrought destruction, you have to understand the nature of annual plants. The vast majority of plants on our planet are perennials. Once established, they live for years, sometimes centuries, accumulating sunlight into cellulose. Because they have a lot of time to reproduce, they use multiple strategies: runners, tubers, canes, seeds. Their function in the ecosystem is vital: their roots literally hold the soil in place. And without topsoil, there is no life, or no land life anyway.

Now contrast that to annuals. They only live a short season or two, and in that time they have to complete their life’s purpose: reproduction. So So they bet the whole farm on one strategy: big, fat seeds. Their seeds are patient because they have to be. There’s no point in sprouting when the competition is established perennials. Their tiny little radicles don’t stand a chance against a tight mat of perennial roots. They wait until something has destroyed the perennials and bared the soil—fire, flood, earthquake, migrating bison, humans.

With the perennial plants temporarily shoved aside, the annuals come into their own. The seeds sprout, roots go down, stalks shoot up, and the plants get to work on getting sexy. They don’t have long to send out love letters of shape and color, sweet nothings of pollen and scent, before perennials start closing in and, in temperate climates, winter.
So the annuals get themselves fertilized, their seed pods swell and burst, and the next generation of seeds lie waiting in the soil for their disaster. Living proof that nature loves an opportunist.

From the point of view of the soil, nothing could be better. Bare dirt is an emergency and annuals are the first responders, holding and protecting the soil with their bodies of roots and leaves. Annuals are like the band-aid over a wound, while perennials are the flesh that eventually knits back together.

 

[Corvus]

I think you might have missed the main point, Corvinus. In/from an STS world/perpective, it IS a kind of "partnership." As the C's have said, we WANTED increased physicality, a desire based imbalance, that led to our "partnership" with Higher Density STS. And like Gurdjieff said about conscious evil i.e. higher density STS, after all it makes the process of evolution "more interesting." It's all a natural development of aligning with STS that we became their "food source."

The one who "missed" the point is the author with it s subjective view because partnership and "partnership", let s be honest and say slavery, are not the same thing by my account, but I agree through sts perception it is seen as partnership for sure but I am trying to see things more in a objective way then a wishful way. It seems it is ok when sts beings do things to others, then it is called partnership, but when it is done to them like in every sts existence there is that hypocritical cry "partnership".

 

[whitecoast]

I think you might have missed the main point, Corvinus. In/from an STS world/perpective, it IS a kind of "partnership." As the C's have said, we WANTED increased physicality, a desire based imbalance, that led to our "partnership" with Higher Density STS. And like Gurdjieff said about conscious evil i.e. higher density STS, after all it makes the process of evolution "more interesting." It's all a natural development of aligning with STS that we became their "food source."

The one who "missed" the point is the author with it s subjective view because partnership and "partnership", let s be honest and say slavery, are not the same thing by my account, but I agree through sts perception it is seen as partnership for sure but I am trying to see things more in a objective way then a wishful way. It seems it is ok when sts beings do things to others, then it is called partnership, but when it is done to them like in every sts existence there is that hypocritical cry "partnership".

Hi Corvinus, I think you're engaging in black-and-white and subjective thinking here. The same kind of thinking that Lierre Keith criticizes for buying into false dichotomies that cloud objective discussion of the domestication of our food. You say our situation with the 4D STS is slavery. Do you forget that people have free will? Every choice people make toward STS sanctions the feeding hierarchy they plug into and are subjected to. That's neither good nor bad; it's simply nature.

 

[Corvus]

Hi Corvinus, I think you're engaging in black-and-white and subjective thinking here.

If you say so, but could you indicate which specific words did indicate subjective black and white thinking not a nature of things?

You say our situation with the 4D STS is slavery. Do you forget that people have free will? Every choice people make toward STS sanctions the feeding hierarchy they plug into and are subjected to.

I did not forget about free will, but I thought when you see a duck it is a duck, not a chicken, even if it is naturally fed duck.

That's neither good nor bad; it's simply nature.

Maybe it is more appropriately to say Nature is being "bad" or "good".

 

[Renaissance]

Annuals serve their purpose when the land has been devastated somehow; they pave the way for the return of the perennials. (Heard about this from Lierre Keith.)

Do you have a reference where she said that?

I think this comes from Lierre Keith's The Vegetarian Myth p.31-32:

<snip>

From the point of view of the soil, nothing could be better. Bare dirt is an emergency and annuals are the first responders, holding and protecting the soil with their bodies of roots and leaves. Annuals are like the band-aid over a wound, while perennials are the flesh that eventually knits back together.

Thanks for finding that, Belibaste. It does make sense that annuals would have a part to play. My assessment that annuals are 'takers' doesn't match up with their natural role.

It is interesting to me that humans have over-developed annuals. Seems their intensity makes them "ripe for the pickens". The false personality as well as our physical cravings for sugar seems quite attracted to this intensity. In a way it reminds me of the phases of culture shock and the phases of a relationship. In the beginning there is newness and intensity, or the 'honeymoon' stage. When this wears off there is the negotiation phase where there is a bit of crash, but if one can get through this then they get to the adjustment and mastery phases. The false personality seems to want to stay in the honeymoon phase. Constant stimulation, newness and good feelings. I think addiction seeks to stay in this stage too, and avoids the development of any real roots. Seems pretty analogous to how we have treated perennials and annuals.

 

[Muxel]

I transcribed the part:

Annuals only grow for a brief season or two. It's just long enough to produce a big seed. The metaphor I like to use: if you cut your skin, you get a band-aid, and you put a band-aid on that skin. That's an emergency, right? Your skin is open and you don't want that to happen, and the band-aid will hold it together until your skin knits back and seals up over the wound. Well there are wounds that happen to nature as well. There's fires, there's floods, there's tornadoes, earthquakes, all kinds of things can happen. And the soil is bared. So just like the cut in your skin, this is an emergency for the planet. And that is the moment that annuals fulfill their purpose. They will spring to life in that bare soil. An annual seed cannot compete against the perennial root, that root mat of the perennials. But when that is cleared for some reason, for some terrible emergency, that's when the annuals spring to life. Those seeds have lain dormant in the soil; this is their moment in the sun. They spring to life. They've only got a season or two because, just like your skin knitting back together, the perennials start to close in to heal up that wound again. So in that moment, all the annuals, all of their energy goes to producing that seed. It's their only strategy for reproduction, is the seed. So their seeds are big, and what this means of course is that some of them are big enough to be worth it to humans to try to eat. So all the plants that humans have learned to domesticate, it all starts with the annual grains, which were once annual grasses.

Lierre Keith At Berkeley City College - Part 1

 

[Pierre]

It is interesting to me that humans have over-developed annuals. Seems their intensity makes them "ripe for the pickens". The false personality as well as our physical cravings for sugar seems quite attracted to this intensity. In a way it reminds me of the phases of culture shock and the phases of a relationship. In the beginning there is newness and intensity, or the 'honeymoon' stage. When this wears off there is the negotiation phase where there is a bit of crash, but if one can get through this then they get to the adjustment and mastery phases. The false personality seems to want to stay in the honeymoon phase. Constant stimulation, newness and good feelings. I think addiction seeks to stay in this stage too, and avoids the development of any real roots. Seems pretty analogous to how we have treated perennials and annuals.

That's an interesting analogy. It's all the more true that during the honeymoon phase people involved are ruled by strong hormonal signals that distort their perception and feeling. That's quite similar to the effects of opioids-rich foods.