Pre-Columbus Food

[Ashroot]

I need to know what food was present before Columbus vikings or Knight's Templar arrived.

Edit I know of: corn, pumpkins, and beans.

[Yačay256]

What do you mean "The Knights Templar?"... they never arrived in the Americas, and the food they ate obviously did not get transfered to the Amerinds before Columbus. BTW, besides Columbus their is conclusive evidence only for the Norse and some for the Malians.

Anyway, here are some links:
The Basic
Andean
Mesoamerican
Eastern North America

[Ossicone]

Do you mean present in the Americas?

[Trailsend]

What region are we talking about? Alaskan Peninsula, Greenland, Northeast Coast, Northwest Coast, Great Plains, Southwest, Appalachians, Yucatan, Amazon, Andes...?

[Ashroot]

What do you mean "The Knights Templar?"... they never arrived in the Americas, and the food ate obviously did not get transfered to the Amerinds before Columbus. BTW, besides Columbus their is conclusive evidence only for the Norse and some for the Malians.

There is a theory that the Knights Templar arrived very early in an attempt to escape their exile. There was a whole episode on history channel. Though never mind that. Thank you.

What region are we talking about? Alaskan Peninsula, Greenland, Northeast Coast, Northwest Coast, Great Plains, Southwest, Appalachians, Yucatan, Amazon, Andes...?

General. I am mostly talking about farming though.

[cybrxkhan]

I need to know what food was present before Columbus vikings or Knight's Templar arrived.

Knights Templar are not generally accepted as discovers of America by most historians. ;-) Also, the History Channel is no longer a reputable source except on rare occasions in my opinion.

What do you mean "The Knights Templar?"... they never arrived in the Americas, and the food ate obviously did not get transfered to the Amerinds before Columbus. BTW, besides Columbus their is conclusive evidence only for the Norse and some for the Malians.

Actually the theory about the West Africans are not supported by most historians, although frankly I do agree that even if they didn't actually get there, there was a good chance they could have. Then of course there're also theories stating that the Chinese, Romans, Phoenicians, Ancient Egyptians, Japanese, Polynesians, and even pre-Columbus Europeans reached America before Columbus did, but the only two that are accepted by most historians are Columbus and the Scandinavians.

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Anyhow, Wikipedia provides, again, a good place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columb ... evelopment

However, I would like to warn that there was a massive amount of diversity between different regions of the Americas, given that, well, it's an entire goddamn hemisphere unto itself, and that due to thousands of years of history, that food obviously changed in that time. An Inca isn't going to eat the same thing as an Aztec, and an eskimo from 1000 CE insn't going to eat necessearily the same thing as one from 1600 CE or 2000 CE. So I would like to suggest that your question is a bit vague in that sense.

[Ashroot]

Technically Asian's discovered America they just didn't know it. Aka, the Indians.

______________
Thank You.

[cybrxkhan]

Technically Asian's discovered America they just didn't know it. Aka, the Indians.

True, I will eagerly concede to that.

Anyhow, as I stated, I suggest that you might want to narrow down what region you're looking at. The differences between the foods of these regions can be as vast as the differences between France, Italy, Arabia, Zimbabwe, India, Northeastern China, and the Ryukyu Islands.

[Ashroot]

Well The region I working with is rain forest bordered by plains. I could if they say yes have a ten miles wide, and roughly thousand miles long strip of land. It will be well watered and fertile. I was going to have an agricultural society interact with the rain forest society. Both are under the same kingdom, so yeah.
Edit: I need forest food.

[cybrxkhan]

Well The region I working with is rain forest bordered by plains. I could if they say yes have a ten miles wide, and roughly thousand miles long strip of land. It will be well watered and fertile. I was going to have an agricultural society interact with the rain forest society. Both are under the same kingdom, so yeah.
Edit: I need forest food.

Well, from what I would imagine, tomatos, maize/corn, squash, tropical fruits (vague, huh?), nuts, berries, fish, beans, whatever small huntable animals are in the area, etc...

Alright, back to wikipedia - if you go to this page HERE, you'll see a whole list of different indigenous American peoples. I suggest looking up some of the groups of people classified as part of the "Northwest Woodlands", "Southeast", "Carribean", "MesoAmerica", and the Amazon, and then searching on google for the traditional foods of whatever group strikes your fancy. That'll probably be the easiest way for you to figure out this stuff.

[Ashroot]

Don't forget cocoa.

[Etherman]

Technically Asian's discovered America they just didn't know it. Aka, the Indians.

Sorry, the caucasians were here first. Specifically Jean Luc Picard.

I need to know what food was present before Columbus vikings or Knight's Templar arrived.

There's a hell of a lot that's edible. Acorns and other nuts, dozens of berries, the inner bark of certain trees, cattails, milkweed sap, various mushrooms, sword fern tubers, fiddleheads, pond lilies, dozens of other flowers, grasses, all birds, many kinds of fish, most if not all mammals (deer, bear, buffalo), etc. Google "eat the weeds".

[cybrxkhan]

Don't forget cocoa.

Ah, good stuff. I should think about using that in my conworld too...

Technically Asian's discovered America they just didn't know it. Aka, the Indians.

Sorry, the caucasians were here first. Specifically Jean Luc Picard.

Apparently the wikipedia article says that that is disputable. :-|

[Yačay256]

@Etherman: Race really does not have anything to do with history (until the Occidentals constructed it in the 1600s), as all human societies are equal in overall psychological capacity, of course.

Besides, how could really you call Kennewick Man "Caucasian" if he lived over 5 millenia before the Proto-Indo-Europeans of the Chalcolithic?

Besides, we have DNA evidence to support that the generally accepted theory migration from Siberia led to all modern Amerinds, save the Eskimo-Aleut speakers, and we can see it quite clearly in the similarities in the Chukchi Language of Paleosiberia to many Amerind Languages (both are polysynthetic).
@Cybrxkhan: Most likely true about the Malians, though see this.

[Micamo]

There is a theory that the Knights Templar arrived very early in an attempt to escape their exile. There was a whole episode on history channel.

Gee, wonder what the next history channel special will be? "Hitler's still alive?" "The Earth is actually hollow and the Nazis have a base inside?" "Hitler was actually the ghost of a space alien who also partied with Jesus?"

[Tanni]

Besides, we have DNA evidence to support that the generally accepted theory migration from Siberia led to all modern Amerinds, save the Eskimo-Aleut speakers, and we can see it quite clearly in the similarities in the Chukchi Language of Paleosiberia to many Amerind Languages (both are polysynthetic).

Usually, typological similarities don't prove genetic relationships of languages.

[Thakowsaizmu]

Sorry, the caucasians were here first. Specifically Jean Luc Picard.

Make it so.

Spoiler:

Now that we're alone, I can completely geek out. Technically, Jean Luc was the first man anywhere, because he travelled back to the begining of life on Earth in "All Good Things"...

[MrKrov]

Besides, how could really you call Kennewick Man "Caucasian" if he lived over 5 millenia before the Proto-Indo-Europeans of the Chalcolithic?

He can't because his own wiki link says so, but if you read it, he may've lived as recent as 5650 years ago. That's the thing about ranges.
Also I found nothing in your link that requires anyone to've been assocated with the Proto-Indo-Europeans to be "Caucasian". He's wrong, but you're wrong too.

Besides, we have DNA evidence to support that the generally accepted theory migration from Siberia led to all modern Amerinds, save the Eskimo-Aleut speakers, and we can see it quite clearly in the similarities in the Chukchi Language of Paleosiberia to many Amerind Languages (both are polysynthetic).

Technically true that one isolated specimen of uncertain origin doesn't override the DNA evidence, but I'd hope you'd still admit the Eskimo-Aleut speakers came from that way too, if not at the same time. Typology of languages is a horrible way to group people.

@Cybrxkhan: Most likely true about the Malians, though see this.

The consensus among mainstream archaeologists, anthropologists, ethnohistorians, linguists, and other modern pre-Columbian scholars is that there is no evidence of any such voyage reaching the Americas, and that there are insufficient evidential grounds to suppose there has been contact between Africa and the New World at any point in the pre-Columbian era.

Nope, still nothing to reasonably suggest it.

[Yačay256]

@MrKrov: Concerning the Chukchi Language, there are similarities that probably have to do with relation, due to the (obviously more important) DNA evidence, yet it would be incorrect to ignore the importance of glottochronlogy in the social sciences. Also, I did not mean to state that the Eskimo-Aleut speakers did not come from Siberia, and you are correct that they did do so later.

I meant that Cybrxkhan is correct and that I was wrong.

Also, to clarify, I am assuming that Etherman means "Occidental with pale skin" by Caucasian (of course, the true "Caucasians" are the Georgians, Chechens, Bats, &c. but that would be overly pedantic); the point of the link is that race is a constructed category, and the "White/European-Yellow/East Asian-Black/Subsaharan African-Red/Amerindian-Brown/someone else" is a constructed unrealistic system: What good reason is there to group the Ethiopians and the Kikongo together ("Black"), or the Inka and the Ute ("Red"), or the Tamils and the Samoans ("Brown")? There are useful ways to divide people into groups -Geography, Culture, and so on- but the category of "Race" is not one of them.
@Micamo: I agree, the History Channel is rightly mocked as the "Hitler Channel."

[cybrxkhan]

Gee, wonder what the next history channel special will be? "Hitler's still alive?" "The Earth is actually hollow and the Nazis have a base inside?" "Hitler was actually the ghost of a space alien who also partied with Jesus?"

That wouldn't be ridiculous by their standards.

And throw in the fact that half of their shows don't even have to do with pseudo-history. I mean, what the hell is the point of having a show talking about truck drivers in the Alaska?