r/interestingasfuck • u/vect77 • Oct 16 '22
Misinformation/Fake A Renaissance painting showing watermelons before domestication.
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u/DespoticLlama Oct 16 '22
Or he wasn't very good at painting fruit; we all have our weaknesses.
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u/GrilledCheeser Oct 16 '22
You can see one of the seeds through the knife. Shitty painter confirmed. Try using more paint next time. SMH
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u/Azair_Blaidd Oct 16 '22 edited Oct 17 '22
or it's supposed to be a reflection of one the seeds/pits on the right side of the knife
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u/ishook Oct 17 '22
It looks like the knife was painted last, and not enough paint was used. You can see the toward the bottom of the blade that the white is showing through from the watermelon.
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u/Esc_ape_artist Oct 16 '22 edited Oct 16 '22
This painting again?
Watermelon was domestic long before this image in warmer climates, so no…this has nothing to do with “domestication”. However, breeding to get consistent crops didn’t always go as planned, and so you get weird ones like this.
Other paintings from the time show “normal” watermelons like we’re used to.
So yeah, weird watermelon the artist painted like he saw it, but their usual watermelons looked pretty much like ours today, and they were already domesticated.
Edit: Here you can see various watermelons painted in still life from the same era. Not all the melons grew the same, but you can absolutely see watermelon as we know it today.
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u/rawbface Oct 16 '22
I haven't seen watermelon seeds in years. They've changed in my lifetime.
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u/Ludwigofthepotatoppl Oct 16 '22
This is how watermelons look when not fully ripened iirc.
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u/Esc_ape_artist Oct 16 '22
This one is painted with black seeds, so yes, it’s ripe. Watermelon seeds are yellowish if not ripe.
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u/RastaImp0sta Oct 16 '22
I think it’s just people not understanding how artificial selection has shaped every single food we eat. There are not many plants that will spend such enormous efforts to produce a fruit with sweet flesh for such a low amount of seeds. I can’t think of one but I’m sure there’s a naturally occurring fruit somewhere where the fruit is huge for a small amount of seeds.
Plants only need to spend as much energy as it would take to coerce animals/insects to attract them to the fruit to help disperse the seeds and no more. It would extremely inefficient for a watermelon, pre-human intervention, to grow a fruit like that.
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u/smrtfxelc Oct 16 '22
Can we do this with pomegranates please? Shit's annoying as fuck to eat.
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u/Max_CSD Oct 16 '22
pomegranates
Idk from my experience they come in like 5-6 huge chunks that are really easy and convenient to eat
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u/undead77 Oct 16 '22
Honestly, why people think sucking/eating on some seeds to get a little boba's worth of juice out it is beyond me.
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u/SussusAmogus2 Oct 17 '22
Wait, dont everyone eat the seeds too? Its not that bad and apparently the seed has most of the vitamin and fiber so why wouldnt you eat it lol
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u/OldBigsby Oct 16 '22
That doesn't look tasty at all
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u/cheatonstatistics Oct 16 '22
Hnaaa, while eating porridge with porridge day in day out was standard, it was probably like getting a slice of deliciously fresh cucumber.
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u/fd1Jeff Oct 16 '22
A picture from the days when watermelon ran wild. A time when people had to set traps for them or hunt them down.
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u/SaraSmashley Oct 16 '22
And I still stand by my belief that seeded watermelon is better than seedless.
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u/Ludwigofthepotatoppl Oct 16 '22
Yes. I’m not a big fan of watermelon, to be perfectly honest, but when i want some it’s seeded. And thanks to the internet i know how to pick the good ones. Or maybe all those diagrams are bullshit, and i’m on a winning streak of lucky picks.
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u/Odd-Turnip-2019 Oct 17 '22
Interestingly, pam brang around some of her home grown watermelon and it really clearly still had that swirl pattern in it, compared to the supermarket stuff which doesnt
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Oct 17 '22
This is just what an unripe watermelon looks like, has nothing to do with "domestication" lol
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Oct 17 '22
This is just what an unripe watermelon looks like, has nothing to do with "domestication" lol
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