The seats of origin of most of the world's important staple vegetables and fruits are the Sumatra-Malaysia area, and the Ecuador-Peru area. Most of our fruits have originated, as best as can be determined, from a large radius of southern Asia, of which the Malay Archipelago appears to be the hub. These include fruits such as cherries, pears, apples, plums, olives, figs and grapes. Others, too, perhaps -- apricots and peaches, citrus fruits, bananas, coconuts and mango.

On the other hand, the basic vegetables seem to have originated primarily in the upper Andes -- Ecuador and Peru, as mentioned, but also Bolivia and upper Chile. They would include both white potatoes and sweet potatoes, yams, maize, numerous beans including Lima and navy beans, pumpkins, squash, peppers, and many others.

It has never been clearly explained before, but there were cobs and kernels of popcorn found in ancient Peruvian burial grounds which were thought to be unique to the world until, some years later, identical species of popcorn were found in ancient urns buried in the Naga Hills in the border country of Burma and Siam. This has been a very uncomfortable coincidence.

Is there any botanical evidence existing which links such fruits and vegetables to Egypt? The fruits and vegetables found there now came to that land as they came to Europe and North America -- transported there by migrating peoples.

Is it not possible, then, that an Egypt originally having a cold climate might explain why early Egypt, as we know it, had virtually no such fruits and vegetables?

Is it not strange that in one of the pivotal areas, South America, we find another ancient civilization, the Inca's, which, precisely like the Egyptian civilization, seems to have drawn its early cultural and technological level from a source it could never quite emulate, and which it was unable to maintain? Both the cultures of Egypt and Peru seem to parallel one another in being the slowly dying remnants of much greater civilizations of which we have no knowledge.