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Comment by deadA1ias | Hacker News Reader

Wait. Americans invented pie?

No, both sweet and savory pies predate the Americas, with savory pies common in the medieval period, and sweet pies rare but still made, and only showing up near the end of the period.

> predate the Americas

Hmmm... I think the Americas have existed for as long as any other continent, and been populated for almost as long.

A pie is just a baked pastry with filling inside, and so there are probably pre-Columbian dishes which you could classify as a pie, although that starts getting into classification debate a la "is a hot dog a sandwich?"

The Wikipedia page for pie lists a Jamaican patty as a pie, which I guess is technically correct but I'm not sure how I feel about the classification.

I mean when someone says 'sweet and savory pies predate the Americas' are they suggesting that the Americas didn't exist until European colonisation?

Pie has existed from at least 2,000 BC. The Americas have been inhabited since at least 15,000 BC.

Unfortunately, we don't have great records of pre-Columbian food in the Americas. That being said, wrapping a filling in pastry, putting it in a dish, and baking it in an oven is not that hard to independently come up with.

The Columbian exchange has really big impacts on food even on countries that did not participate in colonization of the Americas. Potatoes don't exist in Russian cuisine until then; same for chili peppers in India or Korea.

> Unfortunately, we don't have great records of pre-Columbian food in the Americas

Yeah but that's all irrelevant.

They didn't say pie in Europe predated pie in the Americas. The said the idea of pie predated the Americas... entirely. Like we were eating pies before the existence of the continents of the Americas.

> both sweet and savory pies predate the Americas

Clearly, it didn't. The Americas didn't pop into existence when Europeans reached them. They were there before humans started to cultivate grasses to make pie crusts from.

You've chosen an unreasonable and silly interpretation of my words. There's no reason for this subthread to exist.

How should we read 'sweet and savory pies predate the Americas' that doesn't say that the Americas didn't exist until after pies?

A normal human bean would read that as, American ancestors had pies too so Americans didn't invent pies. lol

You're just being pedantic because you think native americans were left out but that's not the point of this weirdo thread.

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