"A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing", said Samuel Johnson [1]. The lexicographer's wit is as piquant as the cucumber's taste is bland. The humble fruit [2] is about 95% water and not terribly high in nutrients, so perhaps its detractors have a point.
But as a refreshing snack, and a popular ingredient in salads, cucumbers have their fans too. Praise, or at least culinary nostalgia, comes from no less authoritative a source than the Bible: "We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic" [3].
Whether loved or loathed, the Cucumis sativus [4] certainly has pedigree. It was one of the first plants domesticated by humankind. Originally 'tamed' in India at least 3,000 years ago, its cultivation spread to China during the Han dynasty and to the west early enough to be mentioned in Mesopotamian writings.
The Greeks are credited with introducing cucumbers to the rest of Europe. One of the cucumber's all-time biggest fans must have been the Roman emperor Tiberius. As attested in Pliny the Elder's Natural History, Tiberius ordered the use of wheeled cultivation beds to expose growing cucumbers to as much sun as possible, and to enable those beds to move into primitive greenhouses in winter. This allowed the emperor to eat cucumbers every day of the year. From Italy, they spread throughout the rest of Europe. At the turn of the 9th century [5], cucumbers were growing as far north as the imperial gardens of Charlemagne's capital Aachen.
Much later, Columbus introduced them to America, planting cucumbers on Hispaniola in 1494. They proved so popular with Native Americans that they spread faster than European exploration of the New World [6]. During the American Civil War, general Ulysses S. Grant was so fond of cucumbers that sometimes he ate nothing else: “The general made rather a singular meal preparatory to so exhausting a day as that which was to follow. He took a cucumber, sliced it, poured some vinegar over it, and partook of nothing else except a cup of strong coffee”. [7] An interesting modification of Dr. Johnson's recipe.
Cucumbers, related tot pumpkins, melons and other squashes, are not distinct from pickles and gherkins; these are just names for cucumbers that have been preserved in vinegar, brine or other solutions. Other foodstuffs are similarly conserved - see pickled herrings, pickled onions, or kimchi, the varieties of pickled vegetables typical for Korean cuisine. A gherkin is nothing but a pickled cucumber of a very specific, shorter type, e.g. the West Indian Burr Gherkin.
In 2011, your average American ate 9.2 lbs of cucumbers, down from 11.2 lbs in 2000, but up from 8.5 lbs in 1970. Across those fluctuating numbers, one clear trend emerges: the popularity of the pickled variety has steadily declined (5.7 to 2.8 lbs), while the share of fresh cucumbers has increased (2.8 lbs in 1970 to 6.4 in 2011). Worldwide, cucumber cultivation has shot up dramatically since the turn of the millennium [8], from 76.5 billion pounds (in 2000) to 126.6 billion pounds (in 2010). The increase is almost entirely due to China doubling its production (from 44.8 to 89.5 billion pounds); China now accounts for just over 70% of the world's cucumber production [9].
A final bit of cucumber trivia: Cucumber is one of the rarest of American surnames. There are about 20 individual listings in the US White Pages for people named Cucumber [10], all but one in the western part of North Carolina [11]. Curiously, a Mr. David Cucumber lives on Dave Cucumber Road. The only Cucumber listed outside of Appalachia is a Mr. Cucumber in Rhode Island, who lives on Cucumber Hill Road.
The cucumber clearly has a bunch of fascinating stories to tell - and one of them involves this rather intriguing isogloss [12] map. The map shows the word for 'cucumber' in the diverse languages of Europe and surrounding areas. It shows how the cucumber has managed to achieve territorial homogeneity, even across language borders.
Out of all the potential for permutations, four large, and remarkably uniform blocks have emerged. The most striking zone is the one coloured pink, including many Germanic and Slavic variations of cucumber: ranging from Gurke in German to ogurec in Russian. Cognate words in unrelated languages are kurkku in Finnish, and uborka in Hungarian.
Remarkably, the linguistically diverse countries of the Balkan share a similar word for cucumber: castravete in Romanian [13] (descended from Latin), krastavac in Serbian (and similar words in the other Slavic languages of the region), and kastravec in Albanian (a language with no close relatives). The only exceptions are Greece (angouri - a pink exclave) and Slovenia (kumara).
In this, as in other matters, Slovenia shows itself to be more oriented towards western Europe [14] than the rest of the Balkan. Cucumerally [15] speaking, Slovenia is an isolated part of a larger zone, dominated by the English cucumber, and the French concombre. Smaller variants are the Dutch komkommer, the Welsh ciwcymbr, the Galician cogombro, the Catalan cogombre and the Romansh cucumera [16] among others.
In a crescent surrounding the European mainland, Arabic- and Turkish-speaking countries favour variations of the word xiyar, with qiyar all the way up in Tatarstan [17].
What remains, are small islands of peculiar names given to the cucumber: pepino in most of the Iberian peninsula, cetriolo in most of Italy, cularan in the Hebrides, kornischong in Luxembourg, k'it'ri in Georgia, varung in Armenia. The Chechens call it närs, while the Basque have the option of calling it luzoker.
What are we to conclude from this Cucumber Map of Europe? Does the distribution of the linguistic variants for 'cucumber' correspond to any kind of cultural, historical or other border? Well - it did remind me of a map I saw in the end papers of the Robert Harris novel Fatherland: of a Europe where Germany had won World War Two.
The zone dominated by the German/Slavic cognates for cucumber corresponds somewhat to the Greater German Reich in Harris's alternate 1964: from the Benelux border deep into Russia, with an independence of sorts for Italy, France, and the Balkan countries (among others).
So does this mean anything? Are cucumbers a sinister crop with a hidden agenda, garden-variety shock troops of a New Plant Order? Surely not. From one map to the next, isogloss lines are as mutable as the shape of clouds.
Take for instance this map, taken from the same series, depicting the words used to describe an orange. Gone is the Greater Cucumber Co-Prosperity Sphere, to be replaced by a Russo-Scandinavian-Dutch alliance against a European Union of Orangists. All the while, the Sublime Portokal [18] rules North Africa, Turkey and the eastern half of the Balkans, otherwise so united under the krastavac.
Trivial, amusing, strange. Exactly the kind of map for to get stuck into during a slow news cycle. Or, as they call it throughout much of Europe: cucumber time [19].
Many thanks to Mikołaj Kirschke for sending in this map, posted by his friend Eglė Markevičiūtė on Facebook. The Fatherland map made by Kristo1594 and found here on his DeviantArt page, where you can find some more interesting maps by his hand. The orange map found here on imgur.
Strange Maps #606
Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.
[1] As quoted by James Boswell in The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785). ↩
[2] Yes, the cucumber is a fruit, in spite of of its frequent use in salads. Botanists define a fruit as that part of the plant that develops from a flower, and contains the plant's seeds. All other parts of the plant, be they leaves, roots, stems or even flower buds, are vegetables. ↩
[3] In Numbers 11:5, when the Israelites are wandering though the desert on an empty stomach. ↩
[4] Latin for 'sown', the adjectival part of this taxonomic description is used for crops that have been cultivated for domestic use. Compare Cannabis sativa. ↩
[5] Meant here is the turn of the 8th century to the 9th, i.e. the late 700s to the early 800s. Curiously, there is no protocol for the use of the phrase, so 'the turn of the 9th century' could also mean the transition of the 9th to the 10th, i.e. the late 800s to the early 900s. ↩
[6] In 1535, Jacques Cartier found "very great cucumbers" grown on the site of what is now Montréal. ↩
[7] As related by general Horace Porter, in his memoir Campaigning with Grant. ↩
[8] The most recent one, not the transition to the year 1000. ↩
[9] All figures from the US Department of Agriculture, taken here from foodreference. ↩
[10] 34 listings in total on Switchboard, but clearly including a number of duplicates. ↩
[11] With a remarkable concentration in and around Cherokee, the major town in Qualla Boundary, the land trust (rather than a reservation) that is the last remnant of the original Cherokee homeland still controlled by part of the tribe (i.e. the Eastern Band of the Cherokee). See also #206. ↩
[12] Isogloss maps show the geographic distribution of differences in pronunciation, word meaning, word use, or other linguistic features. The term was coined in reference to the contour lines on weather charts. But whereas these isobars connect points of equal pressure, isoglosses merely separate areas of different language. It has therefore been suggested they be called heteroglosses instead. ↩
[13] The pink island in the middle of Romania is a Hungarian-majority area of Transylvania. ↩
[14] Slovenia was the first former Yugoslav republic to become an EU member state, in 2004. Croatia will be the second one to join, on 1 July of this year. The other ex-Yugoslav states, plus Albania, are recognised as candidates or potential candidates. ↩
[15] The adjectival form of the Latin word cucumis (gen. cucumeris), perhaps used here for the first time. And possibly the last. ↩
[16] A Latin-based language, Romansh is the smallest of the four official languages in Switzerland, spoken by 35,000-60,000 people in the canton Graubünden. It is part of the small Rhaetian (or Rhaeto-Romance) language family, with Ladin and Friulian in northern Italy. ↩
[17] Tatarstan, now a constituent republic of the Russian Federation, is the world's northernmost majority-muslim republic. ↩
[18] The Sublime Porte was used to describe the Ottoman Empire; it referred to the gate that gave access to the principal offices of government in Istanbul. Compare: Number Ten for the office of the British Prime Minister (located at 10 Downing Street). ↩
[19] The English silly season, called serpiente de verano ('summer snake') in Spanish, is linked to cucumbers in many European languages, due to the fact that the period of low news intensity usually falls in high summer, supposedly the best season to harvest cucumbers. Some examples: okurková sezóna (Czech), agurketid (Danish), komkommertijd (Dutch), Sauregurkenzeit (German), Agurkų sezonas (Lithuanian), Sezon ogórkowy (Polish), Uborkaszezon (Hungarian). Americans - though none I have ever come across - apparently refer to gooseberry time. ↩
Considering how much sharks are feared by humans, it is a bit of a surprise that scientists don't know much about the predators. For example, until recently, sharks were thought to be solitary creatures searching the seas for food on their own. Now it appears that some sharks are quite social.
Another mystery is how these prehistoric swimming and eating machines digest food. Although scientists have made 2D sketches of captured sharks' digestive systems based on dissections, there is a limit to what can be learned in this way. Professor Adam Summers at University of Washington's Friday Harbor Labs says:
"Intestines are so complex, with so many overlapping layers, that dissection destroys the context and connectivity of the tissue. It would be like trying to understand what was reported in a newspaper by taking scissors to a rolled-up copy. The story just won't hang together."
Summers is co-author of a new study that has produced the first 3D scans of a shark's intestines, which turns out to have a strange, corkscrew structure. What's even more bizarre is that it resembles the amazing one-way valve designed by inventor Nikola Tesla in 1920. The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
What a 3D model reveals
Video: Pacific spiny dogfish intestine youtu.be
According to the study's lead author Samantha Leigh, "It's high time that some modern technology was used to look at these really amazing spiral intestines of sharks. We developed a new method to digitally scan these tissues and now can look at the soft tissues in such great detail without having to slice into them."
"CT scanning is one of the only ways to understand the shape of shark intestines in three dimensions," adds Summers. The researchers scanned the intestines of nearly three dozen different shark species.
It is believed that sharks go for extended periods — days or even weeks — between big meals. The scans reveal that food passes slowly through the intestine, affording sharks' digestive system the time to fully extract its nutrient value. The researchers hypothesize that such a slow digestive process may also require less energy.
It could be that this slow digestion is more susceptible to back flow given that the momentum of digested food through the tract must be minimal. Perhaps that is why sharks evolved something so similar to a Tesla valve.
What is Tesla's valve doing there?
Above, a Tesla valve. Below, a shark intestine.Credit: Samantha Leigh / California State University, Domi
Tesla's "valvular conduit," or what the world now calls a "Tesla valve," is a one-way valve with no moving parts. Its brilliance is based in fluid dynamics and only now coming to be fully appreciated. Essentially, a series of teardrop-shaped loops arranged along the length of the valve allow water to flow easily in one direction but not in the other. Modern tests reveal that at low flow rates, water can travel through the valve either way, but at high flow rates, the design kicks in. According to mathematician Leif Ristroph:
"Crucially, this turn-on comes with the generation of turbulent flows in the reverse direction, which 'plug' the pipe with vortices and disrupting currents. Moreover, the turbulence appears at far lower flow rates than have ever previously been observed for pipes of more standard shapes — up to 20 times lower speed than conventional turbulence in a cylindrical pipe or tube. This shows the power it has to control flows, which could be used in many applications."
A deeper dive
Summers suggests the scans are just the beginning. "The vast majority of shark species, and the majority of their physiology, are completely unknown," says Summers, adding that "every single natural history observation, internal visualization, and anatomical investigation shows us things we could not have guessed at."
To this end, the researchers plan to use 3D printing to produce models through which they can observe the behavior of different substances passing through them — after all, sharks typically eat fish, invertebrates, mammals, and seagrass. They also plan to explore with engineers ways in which the shark intestine design could be used industrially, perhaps for the treatment of wastewater or for filtering microplastics.
It could fairly be said, though, that Nikola Tesla was 100 years ahead of them.
Uncle Sam's growth from toddler to giant of the world stage.
Detail from "Charge of the 24th and 25th Colored Infantry, July 2nd 1898", depicting the Battle of San Juan Hill – a turning point in the Spanish-American War. Credit: Kurz and Allison / Public domain
The past is a different country. And not just in the poetic sense. In the early 19th century, the United States was much smaller than it is today. But by the end of that century, the U.S. had consolidated into an empire both in the continental sense as well as the colonial one: not only did it stretch across the entirety of North America, from sea to shining sea, it also had acquired significant amounts of territory and influence beyond those shores.
Decidedly non-progressive
America's imperial girth and radiance may seem like faits accomplis today, but they were vehemently contested by the domestic press of the time. At the very tail of the century, this opposition led to a curious cartographic phenomenon which, despite its anti-imperialist origins, we today recognize as a decidedly non-progressive practice: the fat-shaming of Uncle Sam.
Uncle Sam is the personification of the United States (the country and, often specifically, its government), with which he shares his initials. His exact origins are unknown, although an apocryphal reference is often made to Samuel Wilson, a meat packer from Troy, NY and supplier of American troops during the War of 1812. Authenticity concerns aside, ever since 1989, the U.S. has had an annual Uncle Sam Day on September 13th, Wilson's birthday.
However, Uncle Sam is also the continuation of Brother Jonathan, who personified the typical New England Yankee and has his origins in the 17th-century English Civil War (where the term was used by the Royalists to mock the Puritans). Sam certainly borrowed Jonathan's striped pants, stove-pipe hat, and lanky figure. The thinness and old-fashioned appearance of both Jonathan and Sam (who were interchangeable by the mid-19th century) were meant to symbolize a kind of restless thriftiness, a supposedly national trait of the Yankee — and by extension, the American nation.
A lightning rod for criticism
Around the time of the Civil War, Sam had largely supplanted Jonathan as a national figure. As a sort of shorthand of the U.S., Uncle Sam was a favorite of cartoonists in the 19th and 20th centuries. (He seems to have gone a bit out of fashion in the 21st.) Especially during the World Wars, he was used as a symbol of national resilience and an important ingredient of patriotic propaganda. Inversely, he was also easily adopted as a lightning rod for criticism of the U.S. and its international policies.
In various cartoons of the 19th century's last decade, Uncle Sam — recognizable by his goatee and tricolored clothes — is depicted as increasingly fat and mocked for it. His embonpoint is understood to be a symbol of geopolitical gluttony, making him — that is, the United States itself — appear both avaricious and ridiculous on the world stage. This was the build-up toward the Spanish-American war of 1898, from which the U.S. would emerge victorious and in possession of much of Spain's remaining overseas empire, consisting of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and other smaller island territories.
This can be seen as America's Julius Caesar moment — when it, like Rome before it, changed from a republic into an empire. It was certainly recognized (and feared) as such in those days.
Trying to swallow Cuba whole
A Victor Gillam cartoon for Judge, this front-page illustration clearly shows Uncle Sam's voracious ambition toward Cuba. Credit: Cornell University Library / Public domain
On August 10, 1895, the satirical magazine Judge published a cartoon by Victor Gillam on its front page that showed a modified map of North America, enlisting the continent's geography to make a shockingly visceral, anti-imperialist point.
Cuba is shown as a small fish, attempting to swim away from the maw of Uncle Sam, who coincides with North America itself. Mexico is his lower jaw, Central America his goatee, Florida his nose, Washington, DC his all-seeing eye, and Canada his hat.
The map is entitled The Trouble in Cuba. The trouble seems to be that Cuba refuses to be swallowed by Uncle Sam, who says, "I've had my eye on that morsel for a long time; guess I'll have to take it in!"
An expansionist menu
"You're too late", says Uncle Sam: "I've eaten."Credit: National Archives / Public domain
In this cartoon, Uncle Sam, identified with President McKinley, is presented as a glutton and his detractors as too slow to stop him. In 1898, the United States had won the Spanish-American War, laying claim to Puerto Rico and the Philippines among other spoils of the now defunct Spanish empire. In the same year, the U.S. had also acquired Hawaii as a territory.
Many in Congress worried that McKinley's policy of continued expansion would lead to imperialism. Bursting through the door to prevent Uncle Sam from gobbling up a load of overseas territories are Representative William Jennings Bryan and Senator George Frisbie Hoar. They are too late; the plates are empty. On the ground is an Expansion Menu, listing what just has been devoured: Hawaiian Soup, Portorican Rice (?), Philippine Pudding.
Cracks in the pond
Skating on thin ice? U.S. expansionism reimagined as a winter sport.Credit: Library of Congress / Public domain
This centerfold cartoon from the New York Herald of November 26, 1898 shows the comically rotund figures of Uncle Sam and President McKinley, skating across a wintery landscape on a body of water labelled Expansion Pond. A rather joyless figure in a deerstalker hat, perhaps newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer, known for his anti-expansionist stance, does not want to join in the fun. "I will not skate on your pond," he avers.
Big, bigger, best?
A cartoon from 1899, from the satirical magazine Judge, depicting the growth (and growth) of the United States.Credit: Bill of Rights Institute / Public domain
In 1899, Judge published another cartoon by Victor Gillam, entitled A Lesson for Anti-Expansionists. Showing the growth of Uncle Sam over the various stages of his life, that lesson is how the U.S. "has been an expansionist first, last, and all the time."
- On the left, the U.S. starts out as an infant (1783, 13 states).
- The second figure is a strapping young lad confidently leaning on a frontiersman's axe (1803, Louisiana Purchase).
- The third figure is a stern-looking, musket-holding soldier (1819, Florida ceded by Spain).
- The fourth figure is a supremely confident-looking gentleman, newly goateed and top-hatted (1861, having recently annexed Texas).
- Fifth is an older gentleman, slightly roguish and rotund (1898, annexed Hawaii).
- In just one year, Uncle Sam has gone from merely full-figured to morbidly obese but with a confident smirk on his face and a ship under his arm, as a symbol of the naval prowess that earned him various colonies (Cuba, Philippines, Porto Rico [sic] in 1899).
The final figure is pondering the many hands outstretched toward him, labelled as Russia, China, Germany, England, and other world powers. "And now all the nations are anxious to be on friendly terms with Uncle Sam," the caption reads. Unlike Gillam's earlier cartoon, this one can be construed as ambiguous: is this a critique of expansionism or an acknowledgement of the influence that expansion has brought with it?
Expand and explode
"1776 – 1803 – 1867 – 1898 - ?": Life magazine cartoon critical of America's expansionism.Credit: Life magazine, 26-January-1899, pp. 72-73. Via Hathi Trust Digital Library / Public domain
Gillam may have been inspired by a cartoon published earlier that year in Life magazine, which depicts a similarly inflating Uncle Sam, but with a more dramatic finale.
- Uncle Sam starts out as his full-grown, slim-figured self in 1776.
- The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 seems to subtract rather than to add to his joy.
- The annexations of Alaska and Texas only add to his discomfort.
- Discomfort turns to distemper in 1898, with the takeover of the defunct Spanish empire in the Pacific and Caribbean.
- Growing ever bigger and more agitated over the course of these additions, can it be far off before Uncle Sam simply explodes?
Intervention at the tailor shop
Cartoon by John S. Pughe, published in Puck on September 5, 1900, titled "Declined with Thanks."Credit: Keppler & Swartzmann / Public domain
This cartoon from 1900 shows then-President William McKinley as a tailor, sizing up an enormous Uncle Sam. The striped pants list Sam's recent acquisitions, from Louisiana and California to Hawaii and Porto Rico.
McKinley is getting ready to cut Uncle Sam a new suit from cloth labelled "enlightened foreign policy - rational expansion." But three stern-looking gentlemen have entered McKinley's tailor shop and are keen for another course of action. They want to administer a medicine called "anti-expansionist policy."
The most prominent of the three would have been recognized by contemporaries as publishing magnate Joseph Pulitzer, campaigner against imperial expansion. He says, "Here, take a dose of this anti-fat and get thin again!" To which Uncle Sam replies, "No, Sonny! I never did take any of that stuff, and I'm too old to begin!"
And… thin again
John Bull and Uncle Sam in the year 1900, a study in contrasts. Credit: American Truth Society / Public domain
Uncle Sam and other national personifications have several advantages over real people — one of those is that they can change body type to fit the situation.
Despite years of cartoons showing Uncle Sam as getting too big for his britches, in this illustration from 1900 he reverts to type, becoming rail-thin again. The reason: to contrast with that other national archetype, John Bull, representing the British Empire, which was then at its height. How do you personify a globe-spanning empire? By fattening up the figure in question.
Without knowing anything about the content of The Fable of John Bull and Uncle Sam, it is safe to say, judging from the stance of both figures alone, that it will show the former as unworthy of his leading role in the world with the latter more capable and willing to assume that role.
Most maps were taken from this article on Carto-Caricatures, a fascinating blog about the intersection between cartography and caricature.
Strange Maps #1097
Got a strange map? Let me know at strangemaps@gmail.com.
