63 lines
8.1 KiB
JavaScript
63 lines
8.1 KiB
JavaScript
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default: () => _2021_05_15_weekly_40,
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metadata: () => metadata
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var import_index_10ac95e2 = require("./index-10ac95e2.js");
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const metadata = {
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"title": "The Weekly #40: Garlic & The Ancients",
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"author": "Thomas Wilson",
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"date": "2021-05-15T10:11:00.000Z",
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"slug": "2021-05-15-weekly-40",
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"draft": false,
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"tags": ["weekly"]
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};
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const _2021_05_15_weekly_40 = (0, import_index_10ac95e2.c)(($$result, $$props, $$bindings, slots) => {
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return `<p>Okay let\u2019s learn us how over the past 3000 years garlic has been espoused by healers and spiritual leaders to ward off disease and evil. It\u2019ll take you down a rabbit hole of medical advice, social segregation, and spiritual prohibition.</p>
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<p>Garlic (<em>Allium Sativum</em>, of the<em>Allium</em> genus) has set its roots deep in the human story. And let\u2019s get one thing straight: garlic is bloody great. It\u2019s scientifically categorised in a group of foods called \u201Cplease don\u2019t take these away from me\u201D. Smash it, chop it, then fry it. Or top-and-tail the bulb and put it in camembert. Pop whole cloves in with your salmon, soy sauce, and lemons. It\u2019s versatile. Tell me you\u2019re not drooling a little bit, you liar.</p>
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<h2>The Ancients</h2>
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<p>Records of our obsession with this tiny <em>Allium</em> starts some three thousand years ago, with the Ancient Egyptians, and continue upwards through Europe and Asia.</p>
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<h3>The Egyptians</h3>
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<p>Here\u2019s what we know about Ancient Egypt\u2019s relationship with garlic: i) It made up a massive part of the lower class\u2019 (i.e. slaves\u2019) diet, ii) they recognised it medically, iii) Tutankhamen was buried with some.</p>
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<p>The Egyptians knew it was an excellent nutritional supplement. It went alongside some probably very bland (but calorific) grains. Porridge and gruel with a side of garlic. Humans will find joy and love near anywhere, but I\u2019m sure it\u2019s a little harder to find when it\u2019s 30+ degrees, you\u2019re building a pyramid, and everyone else around you smells almost exactly like they\u2019ve not bathed for well over a month, and have only eaten porridge and garlic.</p>
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<p>This wasn\u2019t just random guesswork from the Egyptians to keep their slaves alive longer. The Ebers Papyrus is one of very few surviving full-length (about twenty metres all-in, not a joke) hieratic documents. It\u2019s a medical treatise largely about herbs, dating from some 1550 BC. It recommends garlic as a treatment for abnormal growths. As a fun aside, it also tells us that the Egyptians recognised the heart at the centre of a super important circulatory system.</p>
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<p>But if garlic was a to medical and nutritional supplement, it\u2019s odd that a couple of bulbs ere found in Tutankhamen\u2019s tomb. It would be like burying the queen with some chia seeds. Of course, it\u2019s always possible that it was left there by a careless labourer on their lunch break, but it could also have been so that the emperor would have something to keep him going in the afterlife. Or it could have been that he just really liked it (my personal favourite theory).</p>
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<h3>Medieval Europe</h3>
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<p>Some two thousand years later, medieval Europe saw garlic as a nutritional or medical plants. It was given to relieve constipation and prevent heat-stroke. Just like the Ancient Egyptians, it was consumed by manual labourers to stave off heat stroke.</p>
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<p>Medieval healers weren\u2019t messing about: they recognised its medical properties and were bullish on eating it raw. Specifically this advice comes from the writings of Abbess Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), who was canonised in 2012. Hildegard was a polymath and advocate for scientific observation and method <em>way</em> before it was cool for anybody (especially a woman) to do those things.</p>
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<p>To her, our physical and spiritual selves were natural. In general, Hildegard sounds cool: she had prophetic visions of the end-of-days and wrote poetry and composed music. She also left behind medical writings (insofar as medical writings had come in the twelfth century). In these, much as in her spiritual writings, she oriented her attitudes of what was good in terms of <em>viriditas</em>, a Latin word meaning \u201Cgreenness\u201D, as in lushness and growth. Though she didn\u2019t create the term, or really use it consistently, Hildegard saw a lot to be admired and emulated in nature.</p>
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<p>To medieval doctors, garlic was \u201Chot food\u201D, to be consumed during winter. I don\u2019t mean hot as in heated, I mean hot as in \u201Cthis food will affect your heat humours\u201D. Medieval science understood our body in terms of humours (hot/cold, wet/dry, sweet/bitter). Hildegard recommended we consume garlic in moderation, lest it make our blood too hot.</p>
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<h3>Judaism</h3>
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<p>This idea of garlic as a hot food isn\u2019t unique to Europe. It spread to the middle-east, back to Egypt. The <em>Talmud</em>, the central text of Rabbinic Judaism, refers to Jews who celebrate Shabbat (Sabbath) as \u201CGarlic Eaters\u201D. Despite this culturally-identifying level of garlic love, not all Jewish figures advocated for it.</p>
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<p>Maimonides (1138-1204) was a Sephardic Jewish philosopher who omitted all favourable mentions of garlic from his texts - advising minimal consumption, especially during the summer months.</p>
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<h2>Garlic is a spiritual force</h2>
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<p>Garlic wards off evil. Although we\u2019ve moved on from understanding garlic as a \u201Chot food\u201D, in many places garlic is seen as a ward against malign spirits.</p>
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<p>It goes without saying that garlic can ward off a vampires. We use to hand wreathes of it on our house and over doorways to ward off the evil eye. Allegedly King Henry IV was baptised in garlic water.</p>
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<p>The Ancient Greek goddess Hectate (goddess of crossroads, night, magic, and witchcraft) favoured offerings of garlic. They were seen as a way to ward-off evil.</p>
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<p>In certain religions (Jainism, Brahman Hinduism, Buddhism) the consumption of garlic is prohibited. Jains believe its harvesting is too harmful for the plants, but other eastern religions see it as too stimulating, and to interfere with our spiritual wellbeing.</p>
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<p>I don\u2019t think there are many other plants so beloved and feared across the world. To be seen as associated with witchcraft and night, and as worth burying alongside your beloved emperor king. Garlic has touched the collective human story, and it\u2019s cool that so much history lives in something so commonplace</p>
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<h2>Bibliography</h2>
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<ul><li><a href="${"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garlic"}" rel="${"nofollow"}">Wikipedia - Garlic</a></li>
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<li><a href="${"http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:528796-1"}" rel="${"nofollow"}">Kew Gardens - Allium</a></li>
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<li><a href="${"https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/131/3/951S/4687053?maxto.."}" rel="${"nofollow"}">Historical Perspective on the Use of Garlic</a></li>
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<li><a href="${"https://www.phcogrev.com/article/2007/1/1-7"}" rel="${"nofollow"}">Historical, chemical and cardiovascular perspectives on garlic: A review</a></li>
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<li><a href="${"https://www.academia.edu/download/45254705/Plant_offerings_from_the_classical_necropolis_of_Thasos.pdf"}" rel="${"nofollow"}">Plant offerings from the classical necropolis of Limenas, Thasos, northern Greece</a></li></ul>`;
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});
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