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To the Silent Gardeners

“The tree of humanity forgets the labour of the silent gardeners who sheltered it from the cold, watered it in time of drought, shielded it against wild animals; but it preserves faithfully the names mercilessly cut into its bark.”

—Heinrich Heine, 1833, as quoted in Gross 1983: 323

This book is dedicated to the billions of ordinary people, almost all of them nameless and forgotten, who domesticated rice, developed bread wheat, invented brewing, created soy sauce, tamed the dog, and otherwise discovered our foods, domesticated our crops, invented our basic food processing techniques, and created our basic food production systems—while their leaders, the famous kings and premiers and generals, waged war and massacred. The ordinary people of history gave us life while the leaders gave us death. It is the ordinary creative farmers and gatherers and food technicians who have won immortality. Their names are lost, but their true glory is deathless.

“Let us now praise famous men….

There be of them, that have left a name behind them, that their praises might be reported.

And some there be, which have no memorial; who are perished, as though they had never been; and are become as though they had never been born; and their children after them.

But these were merciful men, whose righteousness hath not been forgotten….

Their seed shall remain for ever, and their glory shall not be blotted out.”

—Ecclesiasticus 44: 1, 8–13