There once was a people who settled in a fertile valley. In their village, they grew enough corn not only to feed themselves, but they also were able to use the corn in trade with travelers. To eat the corn, they ground it into meal and mixed it with water to make a thin gruel. The people of the valley lived on this gruel for many generations.
One day one a young villager, distracted by her sick child, left the gruel out in the sunlight for a few hours. When she returned to the pot she saw that it had bubbled and expanded. This made the Villager worried, so she added more of the corn meal to the gruel in the hope of stabilizing it, but it became thick and pliable instead.
The gruel was too thick to be eaten with a spoon, and too sticky to eat with fingers. The young villager did not know what to do but she didn’t want to waste the food. Then she noticed how the blob of thickened gruel looks a little like the clay that some villagers used to make pots. She put it near the fire on a flat stone. The blob slowly turned into a golden loaf. When it had cooled she gingerly tasted it. The taste was very different…but also very good.
The young villager brought the loaf to the village leader and said, “Look at what we can do with our corn!” The leader scolded the young villager saying, “No, we do not create new ways to cook our corn. Gruel has been our food for generations past and needs to be our food for generations to come. You must never do this again!”
But the young villager knew in her own heart that what she had discovered was good. In fact the young villager began to imagine new ways she might cook the corn. She shared what she had done with her neighbors. When they tried cooking the corn in this new way, they found that they preferred the baked loaves to the gruel. One neighbor put fragrant leaves into one of her loaves and shared the delicious result. That inspired another neighbor to put berries into one of his loaves and noted how the sweetness made the whole loaf taste different. Another neighbor traded a loaf with a traveler for a different kind of grain, and added that to their loaf. The taste was completely different. Soon, the neighbors, sharing each one of their new creations, had dozens of different kinds of loaves they could make.
When the Leader found out what these villagers were doing he became angry. The young villager not only disobeyed him, but had helped her neighbors to make the forbidden loaves. In his fury, he banned them from the village.
The banned villagers were sad and confused. They wandered around until they found a nearby valley that was just as fertile as their old home. They began to grow not just corn, but other grains. They reveled in their new-found freedom to cook not just gruel and loaves, but in any way they saw fit. Their cuisine became famous. Travelers began to avoid the old valley and come to the new valley to trade for their delicious food. As the new Village prospered, the Old Village declined. Slowly and quietly, villages from the old village left and joined the new village, until the old village was no more.