While it's not canon anywhere, I'd always pictured red yams as looking much longer and straighter without any lumps. A bit like the real-world white yams (picture below) but with a reddish hue showing up through the mostly brown skin.
Lands of Red and Gold, Act II
- Thread starter Jared
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I remember some mention that like an orange sweet potato the redness of the TTL red yam is associated with a bit of sugar content, whereas the tuber in the article is said to taste mostly like a potato, but still quite interesting and just proof of the plausibility of this TL's POD.
That breakdown of LoRaG was quite excellent, and hopefully draws more attention to it since it is a major AH channel now on youtube.
I didn't know about this. YouTube isn't really my thing. But good to know about it, all the same.
When I have the whole sequence ready to go. I haven't quite settled Book 3 yet (though it's just about there), and this sequence will form part of Book 4. There's been something of a distraction with another writing project, of which I'll speak more about in due course.
Well, there's been a bit of a spike in sales over the last 3 or 4 days, so it probably helped.
Thanks - glad you liked it. If this timeline gets people more interested in Australian history, that's an excellent result as far as I'm concerned.
And (shameless self-plug), if you enjoyed the timeline version, Book 1 of the novel version, Walking Through Dreams, is available on Amazon. Revised and expanded from the timeline version. Book 2, The Proxy Dance (even more expanded) should be out in a couple of months, subject to publication schedules which are out of my control.
I did work out a detailed nutritional profile for the red yam at one point, but managed to misplace it.
In general terms, red yams have a higher calorie yield than African yams, slightly higher protein content, and lower water content. The lower water content is due to selection for versions for year round storage, and the same effect leads to the increase in calories and protein. In terms of micronutrients, the biggest difference is that the red yam is an excellent source of provitamin A (the same carotenoid compounds which gives it its colour can also be broken down into vitamin A). Most other micronutrients are broadly similar, although red yams are slightly higher in potassium and somewhat lower in copper and phosphorus.
The red yam being a source of vitamin A will play a minor point later in the timeline when it turns out that Aururian populations (and anyone else who has the red yam as a staple component of their diet) don't get night blindness or the other consequences of vitamin A deficiency.
I think those will be part of the Nuttana agricultural package, I think it's very possible that Nuttana becomes part of a cultural and culinary cline stretching from South Asia, through South East Asia down to the Nuttana, with several spices and cooking techniques as well as the use of coconuts and such ingredients being spread down there. The Nuttana could become very "Asianized" in their ways, as well as being the vector through which Asia can become "Aururianized".
Does it have a sucrose content like sweet potatoes do? I can imagine red yams being diversified into several cultivars, maybe some were bred to have more sugar content.
The higher caloric content you mention could also come from higher sugar content, and of course sugar is much more readily absorbed than starch and needs not much breakdown, sweet potatoes are known to be used by athletes etc. for that propertiy.
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Sorghum grows wild in Australia? why wasnt it domesticated it in this timeline?
en.m.wikipedia.org
Sorghum leiocladum - Wikipedia
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There's several species of potentially domesticable grasses in Australia. This particular Sorghum species doesn't grow in the area where farming started ITTL, though there's other cereal grains which do (eg native millet, Panicum decompositum).Sorghum grows wild in Australia? why wasnt it domesticated it in this timeline?
Sorghum leiocladum - Wikipedia
The reason that most weren't domesticated starts with, well, they weren't domesticated in OTL (except in so far as all Australian plant species may have been modified by the land management practices of Aboriginal peoples). The change ITTL is that a different founder crop evolves, and the farming techniques of those peoples are those which suit that crop. Those techniques don't translate readily to cereal grains, and so the plants which were domesticated were those which were more compatible with yam farming.
I did have one domesticated cereal emerge later on the eastern seaboard (Microlaena stipoides), but its use is restricted to areas where the rainfall is higher and the soil is too waterlogged for red yams to be grown easily.
Is it possible to incorporate foreign cereal crops into the yam and wattle farming and foresting system? The easiest introduction would probably be tuberous crops like potato and so on rather than grains.
I just wanna ask how will goats affect ittl Aururia? Like I'd think acacia and goats would be a great combo considering how fast acacia grows and that the tree leaves are basically useless.
Also I'd like to see if bearded dragons get introduced to the Islamic nations and how that'd affect Islam. Also Spain.
Also I'd like to see if bearded dragons get introduced to the Islamic nations and how that'd affect Islam. Also Spain.
My guess is that they use the wattle leaf for fertilizer and feed, wattles have some nitrogen fixing properties so their mulch would be quite effective.
What I wonder too is that if emu and goats and cattle can be raised together, since it seems like due to the different behaviours it will require different raising techniques for them al.
Fascinating audio article from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation about how Aboriginal peoples' oral histories recorded events which can be matched (based on geological evidence) for thousands of years ago, up to 13,000 years ago in some cases.
ABC article "Aboriginal stories accurate"
ABC article "Aboriginal stories accurate"
According to this article, 13000 years ago people at a similar level of technological development to their contemporaries in Australia were building this. Similar pre-agricultural monumental sites can be found all over Western Asia and Southern Europe. But what about Australia?
Estimates of the age of the Brewarrina Fish Traps range up to 15,000 years.