Trial & Error, Bravery and Discovery

We may sometimes forget or overlook the enormous bravery, experimentation and courage required to make basic discoveries by our ancestors, which have yielded the extraordinarily rich life we enjoy today.

Nightshade berries look delicious, but they are toxic

Take food, for example. Some food discoveries were probably pretty easy – simply pick that red apple fruit or yellow banana from the tree and eat it. Or watch a nursing cow or goat and figure if the calf likes it, it might be good for me, too. But, not all fruits were so easy – how many folks got sick or died trying toxic berries? And how much time was involved in passing that critical information, mostly verbally, down through the generations? Moreover, as humans migrated to new environments, the whole food experiment began anew.

Our consumption of animal flesh, especially organs, is often credited with advancing human nutrition above our vegetarian ancestral species. Perhaps seeing other predators enjoy animal flesh inspired this discovery. Beyond our skills of communication and cooperation required to catch wild game and birds, we somehow hit upon the idea that cooking the meat yielded much higher food value, flavor and ease in chewing and digestion. Again, that knowledge was spread between tribes and generations. No small feat and accomplishment.

Other food discoveries are harder to fathom. How did we figure out that grinding and cooking a grain released more nutrition? And who figured out how to grind or crush it in the first place? There is the age-old commentary on the bravery of the first person to eat an oyster. Though that is easily explained by hunger and its ability to get us to try ANYTHING – leather, tree bark or moss. When did some genius, after sucking the small fruit of a coffee tree and crunching down on the bitter, tasteless bean inside, think “Gee, if roasted this thing, ground it up and passed hot water over it, I bet I’d have a great breakfast drink”?

Kidney beans are toxic until cooked

And then there are the foods that require special knowledge to eat. The cashew nut, for example, is surrounded by a toxic sap, which I once learned the hard way. How many folks got sick from that nut before someone (accidentally?) got the nut near a fire and found that, when dried and roasted, it was delicious and safe? The same is true for asparagus, the young shoots of which are only edible for a few days, before the plant turns into a woody shrub with toxic berries. Lychee is toxic until mature. Cassava and kidney beans are both highly toxic to humans until cooked. Imagine how that discovery went down – “Yeah, I know this food killed Aunt Mary and Uncle Joe. But, I think I’ll try cooking it and see if it kills me.”

Observation, trial & error and plain old luck over the centuries have yielded a wealth of good food which we enjoy today. Yet, we have gone far beyond those discoveries and carried seed with us to new lands. The inventions of refrigeration and transportation have made it possible to enjoy foods, not just in their local seasons, but year-round from all over the globe.

While our early powers of observation and experimentation likely focused on the food we needed to survive, other innovations, just as remarkable and unlikely, used those same attributes. Take metals, for example.

Lord Sipan was covered in ornate gold

On a Peace Corps visit to the fabulous Sipan museum in Lambayeque, Peru, the ornate and beautiful gold jewelry and carvings were dazzling, to be sure. But, I was struck by one small exhibit that showed the process of mining and extracting the gold base for all those extraordinary creations. Let’s give the artists their due, but not forget that someone had to give them the metal to start with. As I stood before the mining exhibit, my mind tried to imagine how it all began.

Maybe some gold-rich rock was placed into a roaring cook or signal fire. The next morning some alert and observant person notices some yellow material has oozed out of the rock and solidified.

Gold ore

He shows it to his curious friends and someone notices that you can bend the stuff. Someone else pounds it with a rock to reveal the brilliant and captivating gold color. Suddenly folks want more of the stuff and remember where that rock came from. Some excavation, rock pounding and hot fire later – the tribe has “discovered” gold. And the artists took it from there.

The proverbial "diamond in the rough"

The same for diamonds, which look like junk rock in their natural state. But, someone smashed one and enjoyed the sparkle and ultimately decided they might look good when worn on a woman’s finger.

Such is the marvel of the extraordinary evolution of human experimentation and innovation. No other species on the planet does it like we do. While we continue to experiment, it is usually done behind safety goggles and safety protocols.

Take a look around you and contemplate the process of their discovery. We owe all those early experimenters a huge debt of gratitude and appreciation for their bold curiosity, daring and willingness to risk and try the unknown.