The Origins of Corn & Bananas

[Mike]

I was talking with another forum member and the subject of corn came up. We found that we had both read ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ by Michael Pollan and had the same reaction to the below passage. That 4D STS might have had a hand in some way with the origin and spread of corn. Below the passage is a quote from a session that I thought of in relation to the passage. Maybe 4D STS introduced corn and/or lead humans to find and cultivate it?

Wonder what botanist think caused what it my mind could be an unlikely series of mutations and events that have led to corns rise. Maybe if it wasn't 4D STS, then radiation from comets or such caused the mutations? That's about the only thing I can think of right now.

But while both the new and the native Americans were substantially dependent on corn, the plant’s dependence on the Americans had become total. Had maize failed to find favor among the conquerors, it would have risked extinction, because without humans to plant it every spring, corn would have disappeared from the earth in a matter of a few years. The novel cob-and-husk arrangement that makes corn such a convenient grain for us renders the plant utterly dependent for its survival on an animal in possession of the opposable thumb needed to remove the husk, separate the seeds, and plant them.

Plant a whole corncob and watch what happens: If any of the kernels manage to germinate, and then work their way free of the smothering husk, they will invariably crowd themselves to death before their second set of leaves has emerged. More than most domesticated plants (a few of whose offspring will usually find a way to grow unassisted), corn completely threw its lot in with humanity when it evolved its peculiar husked ear. Several human societies have seen fit to worship corn, but perhaps it should be the other way around: For corn, we humans are the contingent beings. So far, this reckless-seeming act of evolutionary faith in us has been richly rewarded.

It is tempting to think of maize as a human artifact, since the plant is so closely linked to us and so strikingly different from any wild species. There are in fact no wild maize plants, and teosinte, the weedy grass from which corn is believed to have descended (the word is Nahuatl for “mother of corn”), has no ear, bears its handful of tiny naked seeds on a terminal rachis like most other grasses, and generally looks nothing whatsoever like maize. The current thinking among botanists is that several thousand years ago teosinte underwent an abrupt series of mutations that turned it into corn; geneticists calculate that changes on as few as four chromosomes could account for the main traits that distinguish teosinte from maize. Taken together, these mutations amounted to (in the words of botanist Hugh Iltis) a “catastrophic sexual transmutation”: the transfer of the plants female organs from the tops of the grass to a monstrous sheathed ear in the middle of the stalk. The male organ stayed put, remaining in the tassel.

It is, for a grass, a bizarre arrangement with crucial implications: The ear’s central location halfway down the stalk allows it to capture far more nutrients than it would up top, so suddenly producing hundreds of gigantic seeds becomes metabolically feasible. Yet because those seeds are now trapped in a tough husk, the plant has lost its ability to reproduce itself – hence the catastrophe in teosinte’s sex change. A mutation this freakish and maladaptive would have swiftly brought the plant to an evolutionary dead end had one of these freaks not happened to catch the eye of a human somewhere in Central America who, looking for something to eat, peeled open the husk to free the seeds. What would have been an unheralded botanical catastrophe in a world without humans became an incalculable evolutionary boon. If you look hard enough, you can still find teosinte growing in Central American highlands; you can find maize, its mutant offspring, anywhere you find people.

http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=17052.msg149686#msg149686

Q: (L) So if your health is compromised, it makes it more difficult for you to achieve any kind of awareness or spiritual growth. Is that it?

A: Yes. Hasn't that always been the case?

Q: (L) So you're saying that health issues, destroying people's health - like even the introduction of wheat and other things that are not conducive to good health - are ways of preventing awareness and spiritual growth?

A: Yes. A long and carefully thought out plan of 4D STS.

Edit added: maybe this thread belongs in a different section then Diet and Health?

 

[nicklebleu]

Re: The Origins of Corn

Fascinating stuff!

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.

And the C's seem to confirm that ...

 

[H-KQGE]

Re: The Origins of Corn

I was talking with another forum member and the subject of corn came up. We found that we had both read ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ by Michael Pollan and had the same reaction to the below passage. That 4D STS might have had a hand in some way with the origin and spread of corn. Below the passage is a quote from a session that I thought of in relation to the passage. Maybe 4D STS introduced corn and/or lead humans to find and cultivate it?

Wonder what botanist think caused what it my mind could be an unlikely series of mutations and events that have led to corns rise. Maybe if it wasn't 4D STS, then radiation from comets or such caused the mutations? That's about the only thing I can think of right now.

But while both the new and the native Americans were substantially dependent on corn, the plant’s dependence on the Americans had become total. Had maize failed to find favor among the conquerors, it would have risked extinction, because without humans to plant it every spring, corn would have disappeared from the earth in a matter of a few years. The novel cob-and-husk arrangement that makes corn such a convenient grain for us renders the plant utterly dependent for its survival on an animal in possession of the opposable thumb needed to remove the husk, separate the seeds, and plant them.

Plant a whole corncob and watch what happens: If any of the kernels manage to germinate, and then work their way free of the smothering husk, they will invariably crowd themselves to death before their second set of leaves has emerged. More than most domesticated plants (a few of whose offspring will usually find a way to grow unassisted), corn completely threw its lot in with humanity when it evolved its peculiar husked ear. Several human societies have seen fit to worship corn, but perhaps it should be the other way around: For corn, we humans are the contingent beings. So far, this reckless-seeming act of evolutionary faith in us has been richly rewarded.

It is tempting to think of maize as a human artifact, since the plant is so closely linked to us and so strikingly different from any wild species. There are in fact no wild maize plants, and teosinte, the weedy grass from which corn is believed to have descended (the word is Nahuatl for “mother of corn”), has no ear, bears its handful of tiny naked seeds on a terminal rachis like most other grasses, and generally looks nothing whatsoever like maize. The current thinking among botanists is that several thousand years ago teosinte underwent an abrupt series of mutations that turned it into corn; geneticists calculate that changes on as few as four chromosomes could account for the main traits that distinguish teosinte from maize. Taken together, these mutations amounted to (in the words of botanist Hugh Iltis) a “catastrophic sexual transmutation”: the transfer of the plants female organs from the tops of the grass to a monstrous sheathed ear in the middle of the stalk. The male organ stayed put, remaining in the tassel.

It is, for a grass, a bizarre arrangement with crucial implications: The ear’s central location halfway down the stalk allows it to capture far more nutrients than it would up top, so suddenly producing hundreds of gigantic seeds becomes metabolically feasible. Yet because those seeds are now trapped in a tough husk, the plant has lost its ability to reproduce itself – hence the catastrophe in teosinte’s sex change. A mutation this freakish and maladaptive would have swiftly brought the plant to an evolutionary dead end had one of these freaks not happened to catch the eye of a human somewhere in Central America who, looking for something to eat, peeled open the husk to free the seeds. What would have been an unheralded botanical catastrophe in a world without humans became an incalculable evolutionary boon. If you look hard enough, you can still find teosinte growing in Central American highlands; you can find maize, its mutant offspring, anywhere you find people.

http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php?topic=17052.msg149686#msg149686

Q: (L) So if your health is compromised, it makes it more difficult for you to achieve any kind of awareness or spiritual growth. Is that it?

A: Yes. Hasn't that always been the case?

Q: (L) So you're saying that health issues, destroying people's health - like even the introduction of wheat and other things that are not conducive to good health - are ways of preventing awareness and spiritual growth?

A: Yes. A long and carefully thought out plan of 4D STS.

Edit added: maybe this thread belongs in a different section then Diet and Health?

A good find in that book. The first bolded part is most telling in light of what you say about 4d sts. I think Laura was saying that in secret history of the world, that perhaps after cometary bombardment, the environment changed enough to be fertile for certain species (of plant & wildlife) & psychopaths who would have been given prior warning, as well as protection ("bunkers" - underground tunnel systems all over the planet & currently under a lot of cities) & would have emerged with knowledge of the old ways.
Whilst remaining humans would've been traumatized & most/many would lack the knowledge/memory of the past, psychopaths would then tell of places to go for safety & "food" sources (in this case non life-affirming) & they would seem like great wise teachers or something. Thus, the authoritarian following would begin from a point of disadvantage.

That corn from an evolutionary standpoint, would "throw in it's lot with humans" would be symbolic of the 3d sts environment, i think that the plan would have been more a matter of "timing". That is to say, they know about the normal "space traffic" (cosmic collisions, forming/destruction of planets etc) & with them manifesting their hyperdimensional thoughts of the structure of viruses & directing them to their test subjects i.e. us, (maybe they have always done it like this, lay out viruses here & there whilst tweaking species all along a specific timeframe, since "time" for that level is supposed to be "packed" or freely available to interact with) they could have just set up things so that multiple probabilities were likely to result in majorly favourable outcomes, then they would take their pick, though they might have been highly dependent on cycles of destruction for mutations of all species, psychopaths included.

Even though they could do things with relative ease "up there", their nature would dictate a certain lack of awareness, knowledge, & of course they would be somewhat lazy. So psychopaths as their direct representatives would be crucial.
The "evolutionary dead end" part reminds me of what has been said about 4d sts & them being stuck in their own loop of negativity, not knowing how to halt their dying race, (i think that was the lizzies) harbouring fantasies of redoing the 3d experience but with bells & whistles, (just as a lot of people wish they could go back in time & do things different in a typically sts way, foregoing the real lessons that includes all as opposed to just self) & an endless subservient race that doubles as a food source - along the strictly self serving pathway, yet wanting to still go against the answer in front of them : service to others!

 

[SeekinTruth]

Re: The Origins of Corn

Fascinating stuff!

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.

And the C's seem to confirm that ...

Yup, that's pretty much my impression as well. Humans became "domesticated" with the arrival of agriculture -- surely a big advantage to the hypothesized 4D STS as their food was more secure and controllable, just like humans domesticating animals for their own benefit. Besides the huge explosion of the population and ever increasing destruction to life and the planet. A real ongoing feast for 4D STS.

There's quite a lot of information on all this in the forum and on SOTT going back to the mid 2000's, as well as many mainstream sources, showing what happened to humans when they transitioned from hunter-gatherers to settled agricultural societies. Everything seems to point to an intensification of STS: Wars, hierarchies, food 'surplus' needing defending, pathological elites, masses of humans/large populations needing to be controlled by these elites, greed, materialism/accumulation of possessions, new and more social struggles, extreme inequality in terms of wealth and privilege, the whole nine yards of what we know today as the central problems of "civilization."

 

[Renaissance]

Re: The Origins of Corn

I agree this is fascinating stuff.

Corn is chief among US crop subsidies (amounting to over $84 billion over the past 17 years) and at least part of the initial reason it was so promoted is it's unique ability to capture more energy from the sun than other crops. This makes it easy to grow and when the introduction of chemical fertilizers (which came from a surplus from its use in making explosives in WWII) hit the market in the 1950's, corn yields skyrocketed. The overproduction of this now ubiquitous grain/grass/vegetable/fruit paved the way for the creation and proliferation of processed foods, cheap livestock feed, fast foods, and has played a significant role in collapsing/manipulating foreign (and domestic) economies through subsidies that makes corn cheaper to buy than it costs to produce. Pollan talks about all these things in the book too (except that he doesn't go into the impact of corn subsidies on foreign economies).

When you look at many of the unpronounceable ingredients on packaged processed foods, like say decyl polyglucose, sodium carboxymethylcellulose, or hydroxypropyl methylcellulose pthalate, these are processed from corn. Then you have corn oil, corn starch, high fructose corn syrup, aspartame, MSG, citric acid, artificial flavoring, and baking powder. More corn. There's loads more, and I think it's fair to say corn has played a rather influential role in shaping the highly processed American diet. Supermarkets would probably not exist as they do today if not for the 'revolutionary' food processing abilities that came from trying to deal with the overproduction of corn.

Pollan refers to corn as "carbon greedy" because the plant takes in more carbon 13 than usual. There are three naturally occurring isotopes of carbon: carbon 12, carbon 13 and carbon 14. Carbon 12 is the most abundant making up 98.89% of all carbon. Carbon 13 makes up 1.1%. From what I understand most organisms should naturally reflect these percentages. Since corn has this unique carbon signature, it allows science to find how much corn is contained in someone's diet. In the documentary King Corn the filmmakers did just that. They found an organic chemist who determined through hair analysis that the amount of carbon 13 in their hair was more than 50%. That's a lot of corn! So, does this change in the basic building block of what we're made of impact people in unknown ways? We know about the negative effects of GMO's, insulin resistance, hydrogenated oils and related issues, but what of this fundamental elemental change?

Here's what Pollan writes about carbon 13 and corn:

At its most basic, the story of life on earth is the competition among species to capture and store as much energy as possible—either directly from the sun, in the case of plants, or, in the case of animals, by eating plants and plant eaters. The energy is stored in the form of carbon molecules and measured in calories: The calories we eat, whether in an ear of corn or a steak, represent packets of energy once captured by a plant. The C-4 trick helps explain the corn plant’s success in this competition: Few plants can manufacture quite as much organic matter (and calories) from the same quantities of sunlight and water and basic elements as corn. (Ninety-seven percent of what a corn plant is comes from the air, three percent from the ground.)

The trick doesn’t yet, however, explain how a scientist could tell that a given carbon atom in a human bone owes its presence there to a photosynthetic event that occurred in the leaf of one kind of plant and not another—in corn, say, instead of lettuce or wheat. That’s because all carbon is not created equal. Some carbon atoms called isotopes, have more than the usual complement of six protons and six neutrons, giving them a slightly different atomic weight. C-13, for examples, has six protons and seven neutrons. (Hence “C-13.”) For whatever reason, when a C-4 plant goes scavenging for its four-packs of carbon, it takes in more carbon 13 than ordinary—C-3—plants, which exhibit a marked preference for the more common carbon 12. Greedy for carbon, C-4 plants can’t afford to discriminate among isotopes, and so end up with relatively more carbon 13.The higher the ratio of carbon 13 to carbon 12 in a person’s flesh, the more corn has been in his diet—or in the diet of the animals he or she ate. (As far as we’re concerned, it makes little difference whether we consume relatively more or less carbon 13.)

One would expect to find a comparatively great deal of carbon 13 in the flesh of people whose staple food of choice is corn—Mexicans, most famously. Americans eat much more wheat than corn—114 pounds of wheat flour per person per year, compared to 11 pounds of corn flour. The Europeans who colonized America regarded themselves as wheat people, in contrast to the native corn people they encountered; wheat in the West has always been considered the more refined, or civilized, grain. If asked to choose, most of us would probably still consider ourselves wheat people (except perhaps the proud corn-fed Midwesterners, and they don’t know the half of it), though by now the whole idea of identifying with a plant at all strikes us as a little old fashioned. Beef people sounds more like it, though nowadays chicken people, which sounds not nearly so good, is probably closer to the truth of the matter. But carbon 13 doesn’t lie, and researchers who have compared the isotopes in the flesh or hair of North Americans to those in the same tissues of Mexicans report that it is now we in the North who are the true people of corn. “When you look at the isotope ratios,” Todd Dawson, a Berkeley biologist who’s done this sort of research, told me, “we North Americans look like corn chips with legs.” Compared to us, Mexicans today consume a far more varied diet: the animals they eat still eat grass (until recently, Mexicans regarded feeding corn to livestock as a sacrilege); much of their protein comes from legumes; and they still sweeten their beverages with cane sugar.

So that’s us: processed corn, walking.

But back to the mysterious origins of this ba5tard mutant. The history of corn is one of mutation - from modern genetic modification, to the Native American's hybridization, back to it's curious appearance on the planet estimated sometime around 9,000 years ago. Despite Pollan highlighting botanist Hugh Iltis' theory of “catastrophic sexual transmutation”, it doesn't appear that there is a consensus of this theory. For this to theory to work humans would have had to of found the mutant variation during the same season it occurred and would have had to replant it in the next. Otherwise it would have died out. Remember, corn cannot survive in nature on it's own. It needs a human hand to plant it. The alternative theory (and seemingly more popular one) is that humans carefully cultivated and hybridized teosinte for hundreds, if not a thousand years to eventually produce maize. The problem with this is there isn't any evidence for it.

In The Story of Corn by Betty Harper Fussell writes:

The catastrophe to Major Goodman, a botanist at North Carolina State University, is that both theories conflict with the current archaeological and biosystematic evidence, which suggests that "maize and teosinte were as different seven thousand years ago" as they are today. While there is much evidence for the early use of maize, there is none for teosinte. How corn came to be remains a mystery despite Edgar Anderson's fiat fifty years ago, "The history of corn is now an exact science."

So, with all this in mind it does raise the question in my mind too, if there was some hyperdimensional influence. Mutations from comets came to mind for me too, but then how to explain it's survival to eventually become the poster crop of agriculture?

 

[Laura]

Re: The Origins of Corn

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.

 

[Pierre]

Re: The Origins of Corn

Humans became "domesticated" with the arrival of agriculture

Lierre Keith adressed this specific topic in her book , The Vegetarian Myth. In this excerpt she refers several times to Pollan.

There was an exact moment when that definition cracked open for me. It was six o’clock on a January morning, and well below zero. I had a half gallon of hot water to haul through three feet of ice-slick snow so that my chickens would have something to drink. Water had dripped into the doorjamb the warm day before and then frozen the
door shut in the night. Never mind the long task involving screwdrivers, butter knives, and matches to unthaw the door. Somewhere between burning my palm and feeling a hideous blob of snow hit the back of my neck, I thought: I’ve had it backward all these years. I’m not exploiting them. They’re happy, safe, warm, and fed. I’m the one who’s miserable.

Chickens won’t even walk in snow, let alone haul supplies to me. That wet drip sliding down my spine was like a cold jab of reality. Chickens have gotten humans to work for them. In exchange, they take care of us, but not by bringing us water. By providing food—meat and eggs—and a whole constellation of other activities useful for farms. It’s a partnership, and one that worked out well for both parties until factory-farming. The genome of the jungle fowl took a chance on humans and it was a gamble that paid off. We have carried chickens all over the globe, extending their range beyond the wildest dreams of a broody jungle fowl mom, ready and willing to give all to her eggs.

This is the main point of Michael Pollan’s marvelous book, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World. 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. The species that have spent the last ten thousand or so years figuring out how best to feed, heal, clothe, intoxicate, and otherwise delight us have made themselves some of nature’s greatest success stories.

An example? He points to the US’s fifty million dogs versus ten thousand wolves. Wild canines found a better life beside humans. To begin with, there was a lot of meat to scavenge. And the more canines helped humans, the more they tracked and chased and took down prey with us, the more food there was. There are two million named species of animals on the planet, and countless more awaiting identification. Only forty have linked their futures to ours. We changed them—asked them to be bigger,
smaller, faster, gentler—and they changed us. Half of all humans now possess the lactose tolerance gene, the biological result of the bovine experiment on humans. And our whole way of life changed, from hunter-gatherers to horticulturalists and sedentary agriculturalists. All because we liked something that certain animals and plants offered us.

Of 422,000 plant species, only a tiny percentage are domesticates. But some of those have literally taken over the globe. Plants produce millions of chemicals to attract, repel, immobilize, or kill animals. It’s how some of them reproduce. And it’s how they fight back: nature, red in phytochemicals. Just because they can’t locomote
doesn’t mean they’re passive. And every so often in the evolutionary crapshoot, one of them throws the gene dice and beats the house, producing a perfect match with the pleasure centers in the human brain.

Annual grasses hit pay dirt with their opioids. We ate them and couldn’t stop. “Our grammar,” writes Michael Pollan, “might teach us to divide the world into active subjects and passive objects, but in a coevolutionary relationship every subject is also an object, every object a subject. That’s why it makes just as much sense to think of agriculture as something the grasses did to people as a way to conquer the trees.”

We supplied the brute force. As far as corn is concerned, we’re just the draft horses. We need to take ourselves out of the subject position. We need to realize that we aren’t so special. We think we do this human-only activity—changing plants and animals to suit our needs until they’re dependent on us. But all predators change their prey, and all prey is dependent on predators. Do you think chameleons switch colors for fun, that fawns have spots and an instinct to lie perfectly still just because?

 

[SeekinTruth]

Re: The Origins of Corn

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?

 

[Explorer]

Re: The Origins of Corn

Interesting stuff. Thanks for posting.

 

[l apprenti de forgeron]

Re: The Origins of Corn

Thanks Bear and all for this topic! Really the adoption or imposition of agriculture is clearly a step backwards in human life compared to the life of hunter/gatherers. Thanks for the info!

Even though they could do things with relative ease "up there", their nature would dictate a certain lack of awareness, knowledge, & of course they would be somewhat lazy. So psychopaths as their direct representatives would be crucial.
The "evolutionary dead end" part reminds me of what has been said about 4d sts & them being stuck in their own loop of negativity, not knowing how to halt their dying race, (i think that was the lizzies) harbouring fantasies of redoing the 3d experience but with bells & whistles, (just as a lot of people wish they could go back in time & do things different in a typically sts way, foregoing the real lessons that includes all as opposed to just self) & an endless subservient race that doubles as a food source - along the strictly self serving pathway, yet wanting to still go against the answer in front of them : service to others!

Thanks H-KQGE. I agree. And I thought about that too. That "luxury" in 3d sts also be what many human want. If the lizzies redoing the 3d incarnations will be different from what we know. For example they will have full active dna, ie without the illusion of linear time also being consciously multidimensional. And other things as technological wonders, a lot of food (which could include human as physical food) and a lot of sex on a more lasting physical life. Again, the dream of many human! Maybe that tells us a little of their religion or how they "worship" the thought centre ormethion? also if reincarnated in 3d sts, even being bi-dimensional, maybe they can fall prey to other 4d sts groups (some future humans perhaps?).
Well, I hope that's not noise. I love thinking about theoretical realities that may exist and which I have notion thanks to this experiment.

 

[Carl]

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.

 

[Laura]

Re: The Origins of Corn

Well, the banana is not so good for you because of the sugar. But otherwise, yeah, it's very mysterious. I remember reading about it in Ignatious Donnelly's book about Atlantis, and he thought it was strange even before anybody knew anything about genetic modification.

 

[Mike]

Re: The Origins of Corn

Here are some links that contain some info on the origin/history of the banana:

http://cwh.ucsc.edu/bananas/Site/Early%20History%20of%20the%20Banana.html

The origins of the banana are as complex and convoluted as the nature of the banana’s taxonomic origins themselves. Archeologists have focused on the Kuk valley of New Guinea around 8,000 BCE (Before Common Era) as the area where humans first domesticated the banana. Additionally, though this is the first known location of banana domestication, other spontaneous domestication projects may have occurred throughout the Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. Therefore, Kuk is the first known instance of banana domestication, but it is probably not the cradle from which all other domesticated species sprang.

This one theorizes that banana plants were cultivated for their roots and heart and then the seedless fruit developed out of this.
http://bulbnrose.x10.mx/Heredity/Bananas/Bananas.html

http://www.biovisioneastafrica.com/publications/BIOLOGY%20OF%20BANANAS%20AND%20PLANTAINS-BZ%20Jul07.pdf

 

[Corvus]

Re: The Origins of Corn

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.

 

[Renaissance]

Re: The Origins of Corn

Yup, that's pretty much my impression as well. Humans became "domesticated" with the arrival of agriculture -- surely a big advantage to the hypothesized 4D STS as their food was more secure and controllable, just like humans domesticating animals for their own benefit. Besides the huge explosion of the population and ever increasing destruction to life and the planet. A real ongoing feast for 4D STS.

Yes, it's interesting that normally we think in terms of a higher density domesticating a lower one - like humans do to pets and plants. But as noted, in our domesticating we've also become domesticated. So perhaps there is the unseen hand of 4D in this? As the C's have said the battle is waged through us.

This is a good video that shows the results of animal and human domestication and the connections between:

http://<iframe width="560" height="...dQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

A Japanese philosopher, Masahiro Morioka, wrote about "self domestication" where he says, "Through domesticating ourselves like cattle, people began civilization." It's ironic that what we herald as mankinds greatest feat, i.e. "civilization" is just mere dependence on artificial environments. And the greater the degree of dependence, the tougher it is to navigate reality and survive by our wits. These constructs have been designed to make life easy, and more than that they separate humanity from interacting with the universe. Our options aren't just to be 'wild' or 'domesticated'. While domestication seems to introduce some semi-conscious element, it's out of a controlling nature. The parallels of these ideas with Gurdjieff's description of essence, false personality and true personality are pretty apparent, I think, and he even relates personality directly to civilization.

Here's what Morioka wrote on self domestication for any interested:

Human “Self-Domestication”

Although perhaps a small detour, in order to fully understand the shape of this “painless civilization” I would like to consider the relationship between human beings and domesticated animals. The reason for this is that people in an intensive care unit, frankly, rather resemble cattle in the middle of a livestock factory. Imagine a row of chickens kept in small cages where the light and temperature are artificially controlled, an adequate amount of food is provided by means of a conveyor belt, and life becomes only a matter of earnestly eating and sleeping.

Are not the same things humans do for livestock now being done for people? And isn’t this what we have come to call civilization?

People treating themselves as livestock is the meaning behind “self-domestication.” E. von Eickstedt proposed the concept of human self-domestication in the 1930s. He thought that people, under the influence of an artificial environment, are living in a domesticated animal-like state. As proof, he pointed out that characteristics of the human figure are transforming just like those of domesticated animals. This way of thinking was soon inherited by Konrad Lorenz and Hideo Obara.

In order to think deeply about painless civilization, it is necessary to first examine their works on self-domestication. I want to take a simple look at these theories while consulting the literary works of Hideo Obara, whose thoughts on self-domestication developed its own distinctive course. (See for reference: Hideo Obara, Pettokasuru Gendaijin (Modern Man Who are Making Themselves Pets), NHK Books, 1995. / Kyouiku Wa Ningen O Tsukureru Ka (Can Education Form Human Essence?), Noubunkyou, 1989. / Jikokachikuka Ron (A Theory of Self-domestication), Gunyousha, 1984). After that we will return to the problems of modern people and society.

Human beings tamed wild goats and sheep as domestic animals about seven thousand years ago. Although putting goats and sheep out to pasture is greatly different from caging up hens, Obara sorted out the characteristics he saw in both types of domestication in the following manner.

Firstly, the domesticated animals are placed into an artificial environment. To a greater or lesser extent, domestic animals live out their daily existence enclosed in space that is under the control of humans. These animals are not permitted to go outside of the human-prepared system.

Secondly, food is automatically provided to domesticated animals; they need not search out their own sustenance because the owner prepares it for them. The necessity for domesticated animals to utilize an ability to seek their own food disappears.

Thirdly, domestic animals are far removed from the threats of nature. For example, they are protected against invasion of natural enemies, drought, and other climate fluctuations. As the death of domesticated animals would be a great loss to people, owners protect these animals to the greatest possible extent and implement various devices for that very reason.

The fourth attribute of domesticated animals is that their breeding is controlled. Humans artificially bring together the male and female animals to produce offspring; the number, birth interval, etc. are controlled in order to suit the convenience of people. This kind of controlled reproduction could be called the essential reality of domesticated animals (Yutaka Tani persuasively points out the intervention in reproduction and breast-feeding that comes into existence with animal domestication. See for reference: Kami, Hito, Kachiku (God, Man, and Domestic Animals), Heibonsha, 1997).

The fifth characteristic of domesticated animals is that they are selectively breed, in other words artificially selected, by humans.For example, wild wolves were domesticated by humans and became dogs. They were converted and made into a new species that perseveres with, and is obedient to, humans. To be ceaselessly reformed into something more useful to humans is the destiny of domesticated animals.

The sixth characteristic of domestic animals is that the form of their physical bodies change. For example, wild boars were domesticated into pigs, but the physical body of the domestic pig changed. Their snouts shortened and bodily hair fell out while the amount of fat increased, their tusks degenerated, and their sexual cycle changed. [side note: because of a pig's unique physiology, they are among the few domesticated animals that can revert back to their wild state. I've read they can grow tusks, body hair and become more aggressive within months of being back in the wild. I think this is particularly interesting in relation to the Human Origins: Are we hybrids? thread.]

Obara pointed out the above points, but I would like to continue on and add two more.

Therefore, a seventh characteristic is that the death of domestic animals is controlled. In other words, humans devote all their effort to the survival of useful domestic animals, and then forcibly kill when the time comes for the animal to die. A pig is forced to continue to live until it becomes fat and filled with delicious meat, and once it can be put out for sale as food then it is compulsorily killed. Domestic animals are completely denied an “unexpected death.” Death is always determined by humans.

The eighth point is that domesticated animals are seen to take an attitude of “voluntary servitude” towards humans. Think about feeding a domesticated animal: in exchange for food, these animals will learn to toil at manual labor, become obedient, not run away, or perform tricks. Once this condition is accepted, even more a moment, from then onwards it is probably all too difficult to break way.

Incidentally, “self-domestication” refers to the fact that humans have driven themselves towards this kind of domesticated condition.
Let us look at these points in turn.

The first characteristic is living in an artificial environment. Humans established cities and converted the space we live in, to the utmost degree, into an artificial environment. We carry out our lives surrounded by houses, roads, water and sewer systems, automobiles, trains, and electricity. Waking up early, riding a train to one’s place of employment, and working in an air-conditioned office bears a certain resemblance to a chicken in a livestock factory.

The second characteristic, regarding the automatic provision of food, is the very condition of people living in cities. How many people living in cities hunt for their own food in the mountains or fish their own food out of the sea? The great majority of people buy ingredients and finished items at the supermarket, spend a short time cooking, and then eat. As long as people have money, their food is very nearly provisioned automatically.

Humans have conquered the natural threats referred to by the third characteristic in the course of developing civilization. We maintain the rivers that flood, invented houses that typhoons cannot destroy, and have established a stable supply of food through the mass production of agricultural goods.

The fourth characteristic, managed propagation, is indeed a strength of present-day technologies such as artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization, and sterilization. These interventions in our reproduction, however, gave rise to great problems in bioethics in recent years. These techniques were first developed with domesticated animals and then subsequently put to use with humans. Under the name of infertility treatments, these technologies are now the foundation of a large industry.

Humans have also consistently demonstrated the fifth characteristic: selective breeding. Eugenics appeared at the end of the 19th century. Many advanced countries enforced legislation and policies designed to prevent the birth of “inferior people.” Modern medical science is undertaking the same control over “quality of life” for humans as is done for domesticated animals. Although Obara does not touch on it, contemporary reproductive technologies such as selective abortion and genetic screening are typical examples where our self-domestication is most directly apparent.

According to Obara, in regards to the changes in bodily appearance that make up the sixth characteristic, the same transformations that appeared in domesticated animals can also be seen in humans. For example, he saw the appearance of curly or frizzled hair, changes in the number of vertebrae and the bones of limbs, and fluctuation in skin pigmentation as obvious examples of physical changes seen only in humans and domesticated animals.
Now, how about the two points that I added?

For the seventh point, regarding control over death, contemporary civilization shows a clear direction towards control over human death. In addition to doing everything possible to cure disease and extend life until deteriorated by aging, a strong current of thought now advocates providing a comfortable, painless death once one realizes that life may no longer be lengthened. It appears that civilization is progressing towards its goal of thoroughly removing all “unexpected death.” The idea of “a right to self-determination about death” also sits above this current.

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?