Wheat in the Book of Mormon

Parent page: Book of Mormon/Plants

Wikipedia: Amaranth and the Aztecs

Amaranth has a similar nutritional profile to grain (the Aztecs got up to 80% of the calories from it prior to the Spanish conquest), and it is even today termed a "pseudograin" because it can be ground into flour like wheat or other seed grains, which biologically are grasses.^[1] Even today, Amaranth is used to replace wheat flour in gluten-intolerant patients (e.g., celiac disease) or to increase the nutritional content of standard whole-wheat flour.

The grain "Amaranth" in Mexico

John L. Sorenson: ^[2]

Amaranth, considered an Old World grain, was grown and used in Mexico at the time the Spaniards arrived. Botanist Jonathan Sauer thought its origin to be American, but he noted too that it was widely distributed in the Old World in pre-Columbian times. Its uses in the two hemispheres were strikingly similar also (it was popped and eaten as "popcorn balls" on special feast days); the similarities have suggested to some scholars that amaranth seed was carried across the ocean in ancient times.^[3]

Video: Barley and Wheat in the Ancient New World

Notes

1. ↑ "Amaranth," and "Pseudograin," Wikipedia, accessed 28 June 2014.
2. ↑ John L. Sorenson, An Ancient American Setting for the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City, Utah : Deseret Book Co. ; Provo, Utah : Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, 1996 [1985]), 184-185.
3. ↑ Jonathan D. Sauer, "The Grain Amaranths: A Survey of Their History and Classification," Missouri Botanical Garden Annals 37 (1950):561-632. George F. Carter, "Domesticates as Artifacts," in The Human Mirror: Material and Spatial images of Man, ed. Miles Richardson (Baton Rouge: Louisiana Stage University Press, 1974), pp. 212-13. (Sorenson, Chapter 5, endnote 65. Note: This is erroneously indicated in the text as endnote 64).