[Sca-cooks] maize and cubits

Elaine Koogler kiridono at gmail.com
Sat Nov 28 05:05:15 PST 2009


Millet was also used in ancient China and Japan...IIRC its cultivation in
Japan is older than the cultivation of rice.

Kiri

On Sat, Nov 28, 2009 at 5:32 AM, Sharon Palmer <ranvaig at columbus.rr.com>wrote:

> Back on September 1, Bear said:
>>
>> <<< Leonard Fuchs refers to maize as Turkische Ko:rn in his herbal around
>> 1543,
>> but the best evidence is from Leonard Rauwolf who traveled between Tripoli
>> and Baghdad in 1573-75.  Along the Euphrates, Rauwolf observed, "Indian
>> millet (maize) six, seven or eight cubits high."
>> Bear >>>
>>
>> Something doesn't seem right here. Looking up the length of a "cubit" on
>> the web I get varying measurements, but they range from "about 17 to 22
>> inches (43 to 56 centimeters)". Even assuming a conservative number of 17
>> inches that makes the shortest "Indian millet (maize) 102 inches or 8.5 feet
>> tall and the taller up to 136 inches or 11.3 feet tall.
>>
>> I know we've been breeding maize to be shorter and thus easier to harvest,
>> but these numbers seem awfully tall.
>>
>> Stefan
>>
>
> Why assume they were looking at maize and not millet?  A number of
> varieties of millet were used in India since ancient times.  I'm not
> familiar with growing millet, but I found a reference that says it can be up
> to 4 meters tall.  On the other hand, someone seeing maize for the first
> time might easily think it looked like millet.
>
> Ranvaig
>
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