[lawlessone]

>Somehow they discovered nixtamalization, which is boiling corn in an alkaline solution that destroys mycotoxins and improves nutritional value.

that one always amazes me. How did they figure it out? it's not exactly intuitive, especially when they wouldn't have known about the chemistry underneath.

It would probably take weeks or months to notice if doing A instead of B was making people sick or not

[kjellsbells]

It might not be that the process was discovered so much as the method of cooking pot production happened to suit the food being cooked.

In particular, lots of civilizations learned to strengthen the basic clay pot by the addition of lime-y things, eg burnt mussel shells. If all your pots are made in this manner then you dont so much discover nixtamalization as experience it only by its absence when you meet settlers that have pellagra and dont use your style of pot.

See [0] for a technical write up on this and many other pot themes.

[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/arcm.12986

[simondotau]

And also the tribes which used other pots didn’t thrive as much.

[lukas099]

Maybe some people with sensitive stomachs are able to detect things like this quicker than others. Further, maybe the gene for a sensitive stomach confers a survival advantage not just to the individual, but to relatives of the individual (who can ‘free ride’ on their relative’s discerning stomach).

[nkrisc]

What fun to be the village poison tester because you’ve got the most sensitive stomach.

[smegsicle]

boiling corn in limestone pots makes it taste better

[codezero]

> How did they figure it out?

My guess: boiling water purifies it and makes it safe to consume... how about put things in boiling water to see if it makes them safer?