Seeds Germinated After 3000 Years of Storage

A few years ago, there was an African Factoid of the Day that touched on the antiquity of the African tradition of ensuring food security. I had pointed out that the zviyo / njera / rukweza small grain was hard and, therefore, immune to pests responsible for one of the most devastating causes of food spoilage and wastage. For this reason, among others, zviyo grain has a storage life of 30 years much unlike the yam and maize that we now consume in astonishingly great quantities.

On pointing out this great long shelf-life, Nyamuzihwa Masimba Musodza mentioned the case of similarly small grain that had been recovered from some ancient tombs in Egypt. The grain, he said, had been stored for roughly 3000 years. When planted and watered, it germinated. Nyamuzihwa said that he had read this in a book. I am, by my nature, one not prone to accepting what others says prima facea and, thereafter, take it as mafuta engosi, the metaphorical king's fat that must never be doubted.

However, Nyamuzihwa is one person whose word I will take without a scintilla of doubt any time of the day. If he says he read a fact in a book, I will accept it without any hesitation, not even of the slightest variety. When he said he had come across information on small grain that had a demonstrated shelf life of 3000 years, I knew he was not trying to pull a fast one. You see, I know that people who take their time and make the effort to read books are not liable to making things up for the sake of appearing smart and to impress the impressionable crowd. As far as I am concerned, if Nyamuzihwa says he read something in a book, he is telling the absolute truth.

Anyhow, last year I bought, at great expense, a collection of books on the manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians. I have been reading three of them concurrently, with a copy kept in the bathroom, in the bedroom and the kitchen. It was while I was reading one of these books that I practically stumbled upon exactly what Nyamuzihwa Masimba Musodza had said. Let me quote what I came across:

"It is to the excessive dryness of the soil, and of the rock in which the pits are hewn, frequently to the depth of fifteen, thirty and even seventy feet, and to the total exclusion of air, that this is to be attributed; and grains and corn and other seeds have been found, which have remained entire, without undergoing any change and without making any effort to strike root in the sand, or the vase in which they were deposited.

" Experiments are said to have been tried with some grain of corn thus preserved, which sprouted when sown......."

The author, John Gardner Wilkinson, was writing in 1837 on the subject of the state of music instruments that had been recovered intact and still playable after being buried in Egypt's tombs located in the arid desert. He says; "they still retained their sound, after having been buried in the tomb probably three thousand years." This is when he cited the case of the seeds that had remained vital in spite of what would be an incredible period of storage time.

Firstly, I am writing this to thank Nyamuzihwa for the heads up. Without his invaluable contributions and much-appreciated lessons, this was going to pass me by. Furthermore, I want to urge those of us who are fond of history to make the habit of going to libraries to read the numerous books that are available much like Nyamuzihwa does. There is a lot of information out there. It will take the likes of Nyamuzihwa Masimba to fetch it, but one or two such people are not enough to do an effective job. Cutting and pasting the summaries of what others have found in archaic books found in the musty basements of libraries does not cut the mustard.

Posted as a Facebook update.