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La Montañita Co-op BlogFresh from the Field: Avocados and You, pt. 2June 11th, 2010 | 1 CommentHowdy, fellow Produce-faithful. Phil’s back with the latter half of his avocado treatise. Read on for surprising, delicious insights, to get your pallet ready for some weekend guac. Without ado… –Ed.
Even without knowledge of all their extra benefits, our demand for Avocados has grown in leaps and bounds. It should come as no surprise to learn that avocados were immediately prized by the first Europeans to taste them. Below is the description of avocados by Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo, historian for the conquistadores traveling with Hernando Cortez in 1519. His account was published in 1526 in the Summario de la Natural Historia de las Indias:
Note that though avocados are prized and guarded, the “Indians” do not appear (at least to a conquistador) to cultivate them in our typical domestic sense, yet they’re very large and tasty. Now we get to the heart of the avocado mystery. What is supposed to eat this thing? Seeds as we understand them are designed to spread genetic material. Some blow with the wind, some catch in animals’ fur, most are eaten and passed. One look at the avocado, however, and it just doesn’t make sense.
 The gomphotheres in question. Avocados are a leftover super-food of gigantic mammals that fell extinct roughly 12,000 years ago. Giant Sloths, Glyptodonts, Toxodons, Mastodons and Gomphotheres probably dug on avocados, and probably ate the whole thing, and giving the seed a hearty bed of fertilizer to sprout in. Toxodons looked like giant horses crossed with giant elephants, Glyptodonts were like huge elephants, and the Glomphothere was an armadillo the size of a truck with a spiked club like a mace at the end of its tail. Although these awesome creatures survived until just-before historic times, we have only a slightly better understanding of the dinosaurs’ fate than their own; it’s called the Quaternary Extinction Event, and no one can pin it down.
 Really, it's hard to do them wrong. For a long time we thought that since their extinction occurred at the same time humans appeared on the Western continents,we must have hunted them into extinction. But there’s no way a relatively small population of primitive hunters armed with spears could hope to wipe out all the saber-toothed cats or all the Short-Faced Bears from one pole to the other in a few thousand years – never mind all other species. Another theory is climate change due to the retreat of the last Ice Age. But then, these species had already survived several such cycles. One more possible explanation is the asteroid impact/climate change theory. There appears to be a layer of geologic evidence to support this, however, knowing what we do about global climate systems it seems odd that the large mammals of North and South America would die out while those in Africa and Asia survived. And to further stir the pot, keep in mind this event occurs at the very beginning of recorded history. Most ancient cultures spoke of a cataclysmic flood that wiped out the previous age. Luckily, the avocado survived “whatever it was.” And we’re all the beneficiaries of millions of years of evolution. So the next time you’re in Produce,wondering what in the world an avocado is, imagine a 20’ tall, five-ton ground sloth contentedly munching on these remarkable berries in the lush South American forest, 12,000 years before your mom was born. Come by the Co-op tonight, and get your ancient world on. peace, One Response to “Fresh from the Field: Avocados and You, pt. 2”Leave a Reply |
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Interesting article Phil.