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Baked or fried,
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boiled or roasted,
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as chips or fries.
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At some point in your life,
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you've probably eaten a potato.
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Delicious, for sure,
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but the fact is potatoes have played a
much more significant role in our history
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than just that of the dietary staple
we have come to know and love today.
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Without the potato,
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our modern civilization
might not exist at all.
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8,000 years ago in South America,
high atop the Andes,
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Ancient Peruvians were the first
to cultivate the potato.
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Containing high levels of proteins
and carbohydrates,
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as well as essential fats, vitamins
and minerals,
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potatoes were the perfect food source
to fuel a large Incan working class
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as they built and farmed
their terraced fields,
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mined the Rocky Mountains,
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and created the sophisticated civilization
of the great Incan Empire.
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But considering how vital they were
to the Incan people,
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when Spanish sailors
returning from the Andes
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first brought potatoes to Europe,
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the spuds were duds.
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Europeans simply didn't want to eat
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what they considered dull and tasteless
oddities from a strange new land.
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Too closely related to the deadly
nightshade plant, Belladonna, for comfort.
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So instead of consuming them,
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they used potatoes
as decorative garden plants.
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More than 200 years would pass
before the potato caught on
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as a major food source throughout Europe,
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though even then,
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it was predominantly eaten
by the lower classes.
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However, beginning around 1750,
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and thanks at least in part
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to the wide availability
of inexpensive and nutritious potatoes,
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European peasants
with greater food security
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no longer found themselves
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at the mercy of the regularly
occurring grain famines of the time,
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and so their populations steadily grew.
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As a result, the British, Dutch
and German Empires
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rose on the backs of the growing groups
of farmers, laborers, and soldiers,
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thus lifting the West to its place
of world dominion.
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However, not all European countries
sprouted empires.
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After the Irish adopted the potato,
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their population dramatically increased,
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as did their dependence on the tuber
as a major food staple.
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But then disaster struck.
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From 1845 to 1852,
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potato blight disease ravaged
the majority of Ireland's potato crop,
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leading to the Irish Potato Famine,
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one of the deadliest famines
in world history.
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Over a million Irish citizens
starved to death,
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and 2 million more
left their homes behind.
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But of course, this wasn't the end
for the potato.
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The crop eventually recovered,
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and Europe's population,
especially the working classes,
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continued to increase.
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Aided by the influx of Irish migrants,
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Europe now had a large, sustainable,
and well-fed population
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who were capable of manning
the emerging factories
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that would bring about our modern world
via the Industrial Revolution.
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So it's almost impossible to imagine
a world without the potato.
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Would the Industrial Revolution
ever have happened?
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Would World War II have been lost
by the Allies
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without this easy-to-grow crop
that fed the Allied troops?
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Would it even have started?
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When you think about it like this,
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many major milestones in world history
can all be at least partially contributed
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to the simple spud
from the Peruvian hilltops