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Bediüzzaman: Boğazına Sahip Olamayan Hiçbir Yerine Sahip Olamaz

The Importance of Rice

Like wheat, rice belongs to the grass family, the Poaceae, and it looks similarly unpromising as a food – yet it’s become one of the most important cereals feeding our huge global population. Rice contributes around a fifth of the calories and around an eighth of the total protein consumed worldwide. Some 740 million tons of rice are produced each year, and it’s grown on every continent except Antarctica, and although it’s also becoming an increasingly important staple in both sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, around 90 per cent of the world’s rice is grown and eaten in Asia. More than 3.5 billion people across the globe depend on rice as a staple, and it’s the most important food crop in low- and lower-middle-income countries. For the poorest 20 per cent of the tropical population around the world, rice provides more protein per person than beans, meat or milk.

Plants from South America

Columbus is, of course, a person who has inspired admiration and vilification in almost equal measures. He forged a connection which would see the empires of Europe rising to become global superpowers, while the Eden of the Americas was plundered and its civilisations destroyed. Setting foot on that beach, he sealed the fate of tens of millions of Native Americans and ten million Africans. The impact of that moment would ripple out through history. Until this point, Europe had been something of a backwater – but the establishment of colonies in the New World would change all that. The rise of the West had begun.

And the impact would be felt not just throughout human societies, around the world, but by the species that had become our allies – on both sides of the Atlantic. This contact between Europe and the Americas would quickly turn into a sustained connection between the Old and New Worlds. These supercontinents had been largely separate since the break-up of Pangaea, which began around 150 million years ago. During the Great Ice Age, the Pleistocene, the world went through repeated glaciations. And during the glacial periods, sea levels would fall to such an extent that the north-east tip of Asia would be joined to the north-west corner of North America, via a tract of land known as Beringia – or the ‘Bering land bridge’. This bridge

would allow some interchange of plants and animals between Asia and North America. It was the route by which humans first colonised the Americas, around 17,000 years ago. And yet the ancient, underlying theme of divergence and difference between the flora and fauna of the Old and New Worlds persisted – until the human-mediated transfer of plants and animals which started with Columbus bringing back his pineapples, chilli and tobacco in 1492. Plants and animals which had been contained and separate from each other made that leap across the pond, to find themselves facing new landscapes, new challenges and new opportunities on the opposite side. Cattle and coffee, sheep and sugar cane, chickens and chickpeas, wheat and rye travelled from the Old World to the New. Turkeys and tomatoes, pumpkins and potatoes, Muscovy duck and maize made the reverse journey.

The Columbian Exchange has been described by some as the most significant ecological event on the planet since the dinosaurs were wiped out. It was the beginning of globalisation: the world became not just interconnected but interdependent. But it had a wretched inception.

The fortunes of Europe (and, in due course, Asia and Africa) were transformed by the domesticated species brought back from the New World. Novel crops boosted agriculture and populations began to recover from war, famine and plague. But that was in the Old World. In the Americas, a scene of devastation ensued. Just as plants and animals had followed separate evolutionary trajectories on either side of the Atlantic, the pace and direction of technological change had been different in the Old World compared with the New. The Europeans possessed advanced technology: their military and maritime kit was vastly superior to that of the Native Americans. The immediate consequences of contact, with heart-stopping, dreadful inevitability, were tragic. Disease organisms were also part of that Columbian Exchange: the Europeans brought back syphilis from the Americas, while introducing smallpox there – with disastrous consequences. The indigenous population of the Americas plummeted after conquest. It was decimated: by the middle of the seventeenth century, 90 per cent of the indigenous population had been wiped out.

It’s easy to focus on the power imbalance that existed between the Old and New Worlds in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Human societies had developed in different ways in the Americas and in Europe, but it wasn’t as though the Native Americans were entirely without technology – far from it. When it came to their exploitation of natural resources, they were clearly experts. It’s wrong to see the pre-Columbian Americas as, on the one hand, a natural Garden of Eden, and on the other, an innovation vacuum in need of European inspiration to realise its potential. Native American societies had a rich and diverse history of innovation, and the Americas contained completely independent centres of domestication. Many of the pre-Columbian societies of the Americas were large, urbanised – and already dependent on agriculture.

The Spanish explorers didn’t pluck wild plants, out of relative obscurity, recognise their utility for the first time, and transform them into something which would greatly benefit humanity. What the Europeans found on the other side of the Atlantic were organisms which had already changed away from wildness, over thousands of years – which had already entered into a tightly bound, successful alliance with humans. What Columbus discovered was not only a new land, previously unknown to Europeans, but a wealth of useful, tamed animals and plants – ready-made domesticates.

Among those prizes was that cereal he’d spotted and written about, just four days after landing on San Salvador – the cereal that was not only a staple food but a sacred food for the Aztecs and Incas, whose civilisations would soon be swallowed up by the Spanish Empire: maize.

Çay, Domates ve Biberin Türk Mutfağına Giriş Öyküsü

Hemen hemen herkes için bugün Türkiye’de çay en çok tüketilen, en çok ikram edilen ve üzerinde lezzeti açısından en çok tartışılan içecektir. Kültürel açıdan bugün Türkiye’de ortak kimliği en yaygın şekilde ifade eden tüketim maddeleri arasında yer alan çay, aslında yaşadığımız coğrafyada oldukça yeni bir içecektir. Çay Osmanlı imparatorluğunda ticareti yapılan ve aktarlarda bulunan bir tıbbi ottur. Fakat çayın bir içecek olarak tüketimi İstanbul’da ancak 19. yüzyıl sonlarında başlar. Çay tüketiminin Türkiye’de hızla yaygınlaşması ise Cumhuriyetin ilk otuz yılında gerçekleşir. Türk mutfağı için şaşırtıcı örneklerden bir tanesi de domatesin tarihidir. Domates, domates salçası bugün Türkiye’de çok yaygın tüketilen yiyeceklerdir. Fakat Amerika kökenli bu renkli meyve Osmanlı coğrafyasına oldukça geç girer. 17. yüzyılın sonlarından itibaren yeşil domates Osmanlı arşiv belgelerinde gözükmeye başlar. 18. yüzyıla ait Osmanlı Türkçesi yemek kitaplarında ise domatesli –yeşil ya da kırmızı- bir tane bile tarif yoktur. Domates o dönemki adıyla “tomata”, yeşil ya da kırmızı olarak 1800’lü yıllardan itibaren Osmanlı saray mutfak defterlerindeki alım-satım kayıtlarında yer almaya başlar. Domates kırmızı hâliyle yavaş yavaş 1844 yılında basılan yemek kitabı Melceü’t-Tabbahin (Aşçıların Sığınağı) birkaç tarifte yer alır. Yüzyıl sonlarında Osmanlı Saray mutfağında az da olsa domates salçası alındığına dair kayıtlar bulunmaktadır. Domatesin tüketimi 20. yüzyılın başlarında artsa da, Cumhuriyetin ilk yıllarında yayımlanan yemek kitaplarında bile domates veya salça bugünkü gibi her tarifte yer alan bir malzeme değildir. Yeni malzemelerin mutfağa eklemlenmesiyle değişen damak tadı hem Türk mutfağından hem de farklı dünya mutfaklarından başka birçok örnekle açıklanabilir. Kırmızı ve yeşil biber benzer bir geçmişe sahiptir. Türk mutfak tarihinde ilk bilinen kırmızı biberli tarif 18. yüzyıla ait bir Osmanlı Türkçesi yemek yazmasında yer alan bir turşudur. Arnavut biberi olarak kırmızı biber 19. yüzyıla ait Osmanlı tariflerinde az da olsa yer alır. Acı kırmızı biberin geçmişi tüm Osmanlı coğrafyasında aslında bilinmezlik içindedir. Kesin olan tek bilgi kırmızı ya da yeşil biberin yani Capsicum ailesinin Güney Amerika kökenli olduğu ve 16. yüzyıldan önce eski kıtalarda bilinmemesidir. Bu yüzden çiğköftenin kadim geçmişini dile getirirken kırmızı biberin bu hikâyedeki rolünü gözden geçirmek gerekir.

Özge Samancı, K24

There are no authentic cultures anymore

“We still talk a lot about ‘authentic’ cultures, but if by authentic’ we mean something that developed independently, and that consists of ancient local traditions free of external influences, then there are no authentic cultures left on earth. Over the last few centuries, all cultures were changed almost beyond recognition by a flood of global influences.

One of the most interesting examples of this globalisation is ‘ethnic’ cuisine. In an Italian restaurant we expect to find spaghetti in tomato sauce; in Polish and Irish restaurants lots of potatoes; in an Argentinian restaurant we can choose between dozens of kinds of beefsteaks; in an Indian restaurant hot chillies are incorporated into just about everything; and the highlight at any Swiss café is thick hot chocolate under an alp of whipped cream. But none of these foods is native to those nations. Tomatoes, chilli peppers and cocoa are all Mexican in origin; they reached Europe and Asia only after the Spaniards conquered Mexico. Julius Caesar and Dante Alighieri never twirled tomato-drenched spaghetti on their forks (even forks hadn’t been invented yet), William Tell never tasted chocolate, and Buddha never spiced up his food with chilli. Potatoes reached Poland and Ireland no more than 400 years ago. The only steak you could obtain in Argentina in 1492 was from a llama.

Hollywood films have perpetuated an image of the Plains Indians as brave horsemen, courageously charging the wagons of European pioneers to protect the customs of their ancestors. However, these Native American horsemen were not the defenders of some ancient, authentic culture. Instead, they were the product of a major military and political revolution that swept the plains of western North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a consequence of the arrival of European horses. In 1492 there were no horses in America. The culture of the nineteenth-century Sioux and Apache has many appealing features, but it was a modern culture – a result of global forces – much more than authentic’.”

50 Soups from Around the World

From Visually.

Why Many Japanese People Like Insects

Insects have been celebrated in Japanese culture for centuries. ‘The Lady Who Loved Insects’ is a classic story of a caterpillar-collecting lady of the 12th century court; the Tamamushi, or ‘Jewel Beetle’ Shrine, is a seventh century miniature temple, once shingled with 9,000 iridescent beetle forewings.

Insects continue to rear their antennae in modern Japan. Consider ‘Mothra’, the giant caterpillar-moth monster who is second only to Godzilla in film appearances; the many bug-inspired characters of ‘Pokémon’, and any number of manga (including an insect-themed detective series named after Fabre). Travel agencies advertise firefly-watching tours, there are televised beetle-wrestling competitions and beetle petting zoos. Department stores and even vending machines sell live insects.

Nor do the Japanese merely admire insects: they eat them too. In the Chūbu region, in central Japan, villagers rear wasps at home for food, and forage for giant hornets that are eaten at all life stages, while fried grasshoppers or inago are a luxury foodstuff. Entomophagy once had a place in Western culture too: the ancient Greeks ate cicadas, the Romans ate grubs. But while modern Westerners blithely eat aquatic arthropods – lobster, shrimp, crab, crayfish – we’ve lost our taste for the terrestrial kind.

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Some historians say that Westerners stopped eating insects because they had easier sources of protein: most of the world’s domesticated mammals are native to Eurasia. Unable to pull a plough or provide leather and milk, even the tastiest grub was not worth the effort. Others say that modern Europeans stopped eating bugs to distinguish themselves from ‘primitive’ societies. Whatever the reason, the Western disgust for insects goes well beyond our plates.

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In traditional haiku, by contrast, insects tend to symbolise the change of season. As the 18th century poet Kobayashi Issa writes:

Autumn cicada –

flat on his back,

chirps his last song.

‘In old Japanese literature, poems upon insects are to be found by thousands,’ wrote Lafcadio Hearn, a 19th century European-American writer who became a Japanese citizen. ‘What is the signification of the great modern silence in Western countries upon this delightful topic?’

Not all Japanese, perhaps not even the majority, admire insects. But while Western culture amplifies our perhaps innately human suspicion of insects into distaste and fear, Japanese culture encourages affection, even reverence, for the six-legged. Why?

Daisaburo Okumoto is director of the Fabre Insect Museum. An avid insect‑collector and a scholar of French literature, he has translated many of Fabre’s works. He ascribes the popularity of insects in Japan to national character. ‘It seems like Japanese eyes are like macro lenses and Western eyes are wide-angle,’ he says. ‘A garden in Versailles, it’s very wide and symmetrical. But Japanese gardens are continuous from the room and also very small. We feel calm when we look at small things.’

Traditional Japanese pursuits such as origami, bonsai and painting do often exhibit an appreciation for the small and exquisitely detailed. But Japan’s love of insects might simply be an offshoot of a wider veneration for nature as a whole. Nature and the seasons have had an ‘enormous impact across more than 1,000 years of Japanese cultural history, not only in poetry, painting and the traditional arts but also in a wide range of media, from architecture to fashion,’ writes Haruo Shirane, professor of Japanese literature and culture at Columbia University in New York. Despite urbanisation and industrialisation, this devotion to nature and natural symbols persists in modern Japan, in the design of everything from manhole covers to baked goods.

Ask one of Japan’s many insect collectors why the hobby is so popular, and he (it’s almost always a he) will likely bring up this cultural affinity for nature and its historical roots in Japanese spirituality.

‘Japan’s original religion is Shintoism, and Shinto is a kind of animism, a worship of nature,’ says Kenta Takada, a businessman and longhorn beetle collector who writes articles on Japanese insect culture for entomology journals. ‘Our sense of beauty comes from that.’ Shintoism emphasises that everything in nature, including human beings, is the creation of the spiritual dimension and thus worthy of reverence. Takada also cites Mono no aware, a concept with roots in Zen Buddhism. The phrase refers to a poignant awareness of the transience of all things.

‘There are many more people advocating for mammals or birds or fish than there are for beetles or grasshoppers’

The medieval Japanese monk Yoshida Kenkō put it this way: ‘If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, how things would lose their power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.’

You can hardly get more transient than an insect; some adult mayflies live for just half an hour.

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It’s hard to say whether a greater affection for insects in Japan has led to more robust conservation. Though Japan is smaller than California, entomologists estimate that it has nearly as many insect species as the US as a whole. Many of those species are in decline, however, as in other parts of the world, and only the most well-known are targeted for protection. Still, public appreciation of insects is quite visible. Some of the few dragonfly nature reserves in the world are in Japan, and firefly and butterfly appreciation clubs have spearheaded the protection of habitat all over the country.

Andrea Appleton,  https://aeon.co/essays/japanese-culture-conquered-the-human-fear-of-creepy-crawlies