The Colombian Exchange Had Some Weird Angles
The discovery of the Americas triggered the Columbian Exchange – a massive transfer of plants, animals, peoples, cultures, technology and diseases between the Old World and the New. One plant was particularly controversial when first introduced to the Old World: the tomato. After its introduction to the Old World, the tomato eventually became a huge hit, and revolutionized cuisines.
At first, however, tomatoes were met with hostility in some parts of Europe, where they were viewed as a satanic plant. The centuries-long witch hunt craze overlapped with the Age of Exploration. Anywhere from tens of thousands to half a million women were executed for witchcraft.
Less known is that thousands of additional men and women were also executed around the same time, accused of being werewolves. Authorities in much of Europe believed that witches and werewolves were closely associated. They reasoned that, just as witches concocted potions that allowed them to fly, they concocted potions that transformed people into werewolves. Key to that concoction were plants that looked a lot like tomatoes.
Unfortunately, tomatoes were first imported to Europe around 1540, at the height of witch hysteria. From the fourteenth to mid seventeenth centuries, thousands of Europeans – most of them women – were killed as witches. Women accused of witchcraft were lynched by mobs, or hanged, crushed, drowned, or burned by courts, both secular and religious.
