Raw materials and art – 20. Oats and Géricault

Switzerland is a hub for commodity trading. Did you know that this activity represents 4% of Swiss GDP, and even 22% of tax revenue for the canton of Geneva.

This week we are talking regarding oats. First, we will see the description of oats by Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566), a German physician and botanist. We can admire his hand-colored woodcut. Then, we will discover that Italian researchers have demonstrated that a stone discovered in the Paglicci cave (Apulia region) had been used to grind oat grains 32,000 years ago. This gives us the opportunity to admire the painting The boy giving oats to an unhitched horse by Jean Louis Théodore Géricault.

Description by Léonhart Fuchs of oats and hand-colored woodcut

In 1542, Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566), a German physician and botanist wrote the work “historia stirpium commentarii” or “Commentaries on the histories of plants”, a herbarium with drawings, engravings and illustrations.

In 1543, this work was translated into Dutch and German.

Fuchs describes oats in colorful language:

“Morphology: oats are identical to wheat in terms of foliage, culm and spikelets. The panicles emerge from the leaf sheaths, their branches spread out in all directions. The pointed fruit hangs singly between the spread glumes like wings. Each fruit has two seeds, directly adjacent and angled slightly towards each other. The whole thing looks like a grasshopper. The roots are fasciculate. Place of cultivation: Cultivated throughout Germany, oats are used more as fodder for horses than for human food.

avoineFR24.10.2017_web.pdf (berggetreide.ch)

Clad oats (Avena sativa), woodcut by Léonhart Fuchs, hand-colored

World’s oldest oat mill discovered in Italy

Did hunter-gatherers eat oatmeal 25,000 years before the appearance of agriculture? This is suggested by a new study carried out in 2015.

In a cave in southeastern Italy, called Grotta Paglicci, (regions of Puglia) which was occupied by Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers around 32,000 years ago. Researchers found significant traces of oat grains on a stone pestle found in the cave.

This is a typical cave of the time, with murals of horses, human burials and Stone Age tools. However, the grains of oat starch left on the pestle clearly show that its inhabitants made early use of the plants, a conclusion supported by traces of wear on the stone corresponding to grinding. Moreover, analysis of oat grains suggests that they were exposed to heat before being ground, probably to dry them, as cereals are done today. The researchers add that while there is no “direct evidence” that the grains were then mixed with water and cooked, one can “plausibly hypothesize” such a process, that which means that our ancestors probably ate oatmeal long before the advent of agriculture.

Géricault and the boy giving oats to an unharnessed horse

The boy giving oats to an unhitched horse by Jean Louis Théodore Géricault (1791-1824)

Géricault’s most famous work is The Raft of the Medusa. He is also known for his passion for horses and will make many portraits of them.

In the same series, “Raw materials and art”:

1. Cereals and Van Gogh
2. Coffee and culture
3. Cotton and Edgar Degas
4. Cocoa and Luis Meléndez
5. Sugar and Sartre
6. Copper and Chardin
7. Steel and Gayle Hermick
8. Corn and Jean Mortel
9. Biogas and Victor Hugo
10. Hydrogen and the aerostatic globe
11. The wind, Da Vinci and Monnet
12. The Sun and Firedrich
13. L’or et Klimt
14. Barley and antiquity
15. Le soja et Seikei Zusetsu
16. L’aluminium et Jule Verne
17. Le riz and Morimura Gitō
18. Money and the Elblag Museum
19. Tin and Jean Trek

Sources :

avoineFR24.10.2017_web.pdf (berggetreide.ch)

Théodore Géricault – Wikipedia (wikipedia.org)

The world’s oldest oatmeal? | Science | AAAS

Photo credit: Théodore Géricault, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons