Farming in Dark Age Britain

Suite 101 ^ | 3-18-2011 | Brenda Lewis

[Renfield]

I must correct an error in this article. When the Romans invaded Britain, they did indeed find roads....good, well-engineered Celtic roads...as attested to by an article I posted here a few weeks back.

[Renfield]

Ping

[Eric in the Ozarks]

“Fields of corn...” ?

[Gay State Conservative]

Save for later

[Pecos]

You know you’re right because you quote yourself? I think you meant something else. Can you provide proof of Celtic road building?

[Vanders9]

Really? I never thought the Celts were great road builders. How interesting.

[sinsofsolarempirefan]

In Britain, ‘Corn’ in the context of a crop refers to any cereal crop, as opposed to the US, where it refers specifically to Maize...

[afraidfortherepublic]

Interesting. Thanks for posting.

[Oztrich Boy]

When the Romans invaded Britain, they did indeed find roads....good, well-engineered Celtic roads...

So what have the Romans ever done for us then?

[SkyPilot]

However, by the time the Romans abandoned Britain four centuries later, they had turned it into a quite different place. The Anglo-Saxon settlers who began to arrive in large numbers in around 450AD found the country criss-crossed by almost five thousand miles of straight, splendid roads.

"All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?"

[T-Bird45]

I had the same thought on the “fields of corn” since that crop was brought to Europe from the New World well after the Dark Ages. The Europeans had to learn how to extract nutritional value that the New World natives had not shared with the invaders.

[SkyPilot]

Beat me by 39 seconds........

[SIDENET]

rich, extensive cornfields

"Corn, which the Indians called 'maize'".

(apologies to Bart Simpson)

[BigEdLB]

All right... all right... but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order... what have the Romans done for us?"

Inspired THE ONE, Hallowed be His Name... /sarc

[Texas Fossil]

Yep, Maize and Corn are confusing.

Today, Maize is small round grain, smaller than a BB. It can be reddish or white. Corn is a large kernel grain.

At different points in time Maize has been used to describe both.

[9YearLurker]

Pizza?

[Eric in the Ozarks]

The list of new world foods including corn, tomatoes, peppers, squash, is amazing.

[jmcenanly]

I had thought that in European usage, ‘corn’ was a generic term for cereal grains, such as oats, wheat and rye. What we call ‘corn’, they call, ‘maize’, with all due respect to the Native American lady on those old Mazola commercials.

[T-Bird45]

I can see your point that this may all be about semantics/language. Perhaps that old saw about Britain and the US being separated by a common language is to blame. During my 3 years in Europe, corn/maize was not presented to me as food. My understanding was Europeans saw corn/maize only as an animal feed. I wonder if an encounter with a properly roasted ear of corn at an American picnic would offend them or change their mind about corn/maize.

[Sherman Logan]

Corn/maize is/was a major food source in many European countries. Notably Italy and the Balkans. To the point where pellagra, a deficiency disease caused by eating almost exclusively corn, became a major health threat.