April Fools Day

The Annual Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

The Annual Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

April 1, 2010 by Ancientfoods | Edit Topic: Pasta On April 1, 1957 the British news show Panorama broadcast a three-minute segment about a bumper …

The Annual Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

Happy April everyone!

This article is one of my favorite posts,I hope you enjoy it. I repost every year and have I think since 2010…happy 2024. Joanna

The World in Your Cup

Pakistan “If man has no tea in him, he is incapableof understanding truth and beauty.”– Japanese Proverb India “Making tea is a ritual that stops the…

The World in Your Cup

Newly found Chinese artifacts illuminate mysterious ancient kingdom

Wed, June 15, 2022, 7:06 AM

Wang Xi

A bronze altar and a dragon with a pig’s nose are among a trove of items discovered in sacrificial pits that shed new light on the buried secrets of an ancient Chinese civilization.

Archaeologists on Monday announced the “significant” series of finds at the Sanxingdui ruins in China’s southwestern Sichuan province, according to the team behind the dig and the state-run Xinhua news agency.

A team including academics from Peking University and Sichuan University found thousands of items including intricate bronze, gold and jade items, and what it called the unprecedented discovery of 10 bronzes. Experts say the finds date back 3,000 to 4,500 years.

Discovered in the late 1920s, Sanxingdui is one of the key Chinese archaeological sites. Experts think its treasures once belonged to the ancient Shu kingdom, which dates back 4,800 years and lasted 2,000 years.

The new finds mostly come from what archaeologists call sacrificial pits 7 and 8, the highlight being a bronze box with a tortoise-shaped lid containing jade artifacts, including dragon heads. Traces of silk fabric were found surrounding the box.

China Sichuan Sanxingdui Ruins Discoveries – 01 Jun 2022 (Chine Nouvelle / SIPA / Shutterstock)

“It would not be an exaggeration to say that the vessel is one of its kind, given its distinctive shape, fine craftsmanship and ingenious design. Although we do not know what this vessel was used for, we can assume that ancient people treasured it,” said Li Haichao, a professor at Sichuan University who is in charge of the excavation at pit 7, according to Xinhua.

The role of the pits and their use is contested. One academic, Chen Shen, argued in a 2002 book: “Some believe the pits to be a kind of burial, but without human skeletons; the body might have been reduced to ash as a result of a ritual burning ceremony.”

Burned fragments of ivory were found in one pit and the presence of ash, possibly the remnants of tree and plant matter used as fuel, has led archaeologists to speculate that boxes were placed in the pits to be burned.

In pit 8, archaeologists found yet more elaborate bronze work, including heads with gold masks, an altar and a dragon with a pig’s nose.

A curious three-part sculpture features a snake with a human head with protruding eyes, tusks and horns. The top part of the head resembles an ancient trumpet-shaped wine vessel.

Ran Honglin, from the Sichuan Provincial Cultural Relics and Archaeology Research Institute, said some elements of the sculpture were typical of the Shu kingdom, while others were seen in items from the Zhou dynasty.

“These three factors are now blended into one artifact, which demonstrates that Sanxingdui is an important part of Chinese civilization,” he told Xinhua.

“More cultural relics unearthed at Sanxingdui have also been seen in other locales in China, giving evidence of the early exchange and integration of Chinese civilization,” Honglin added.

CHINA-SICHUAN-SANXINGDUI RUINS-DISCOVERIES (CN) (Xinhua News Agency / via Getty Images)

“The sculptures are very complex and imaginative, reflecting the fairy world imagined by people at that time, and they demonstrate the diversity and richness of Chinese civilization,” Zhao Hao, an associate professor at Peking University who led the excavation of pit 8, told Xinhua.

The institute said some 13,000 items have already been found at Sanxingdui since excavations began in the 1980s.

The 12-square-mile site was accidentally discovered in the late 1920s by a farmer in Sichuan province who was repairing a sewage ditch. It is considered one the most important Chinese archaeological finds and one of the world’s greatest discoveries of the 20th century.

The finds paint a vivid picture of life in ancient China. Small sacrificial pits and the sacrificed remains of cattle and boars were found alongside reeds, bamboo and soy beans.

Most historians and archaeologists previously thought the birthplace of Chinese civilization was the Yellow River Basin in China’s north. But Sanxingdui’s discovery, and its excavation in the 1980s, challenged those assumptions.

The new finds are expected to be displayed at an exhibition at Sanxingdui Museum, near the city of Guanghan, in 2023.

Mystery has surrounded the fate of the societies that created the artifacts found at Sanxingdui. Evidence shows that at some point, they left the area and moved to the ancient city of Jinsha, near the modern city of Chengdu.

Some scholars believe the move was caused by an earthquake 3,000 years ago.

Early modern human from Southeast Asia adapted to a rainforest environment

original article: mpg.de

New insights into the diet of our species’ earliest member in the tropical rainforest of Southeast Asia

Although there has been evidence of our species living in rainforest regions in Southeast Asia from at least 70,000 years ago, the poor preservation of organic material in these regions limits how much we know about their diet and ecological adaptations to these habitats. An international team of scientists led by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz has now applied a new method to investigate the diet of fossil humans: the analysis of stable zinc isotopes from tooth enamel. This method proves particularly helpful to learn whether prehistoric humans and animals were primarily eating meat or plants.

Traditional assumptions have often seen tropical rainforests as a barrier to early Homo sapiens. However, growing proof shows that humans adapted to and lived in tropical rainforest habitats of Southeast Asia. Some researchers also suggest that, in the past, other human species, like Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis, became extinct because they could not adapt to this environment as our species did. However, we know very little about the ecological adaptation of fossil humans, including what they were eating.

Zinc isotopes reveal what kind of food was primarily eaten

In this study, researchers analysed the zinc stable isotope ratios from animal and human teeth from two sites in the Huà Pan Province of Laos: Tam Pà Ling and the nearby site of Nam Lot. “The site of Tam Pà Ling is particularly important for palaeoanthropology and archaeology of Southeast Asia because it holds the oldest and most abundant fossil record of our species in this region”, explains Fabrice Demeter, researcher at the University of Copenhagen. However, there is little archaeological evidence, like stone tools, hearth features, plant remains, cut marks on bones, in Tam Pà Ling: only teeth and bones. This makes isotopic approaches the only way to gain insight into past dietary reliance.

Nitrogen isotope analysis, in particular, can help scientists learn if past humans were eating animals or plants. However, the collagen in bones and teeth needed to do these analyses is not easily conservable. In tropical regions like the one at Tam Pà Ling this problem is even more acute. “New methods – such as zinc isotope analysis of enamel – can now overcome these limitations and allow us to investigate teeth from regions and periods we could not study before”, says study leader Thomas Tütken, professor at the Johannes Gutenberg University’s Institute of Geosciences. “With zinc stable isotope ratios, we can now study Tam Pà Ling and learn what kind of food our earliest ancestors in this region were eating.”

Diet of fossil humans from Southeast Asia

The fossil human studied in this research dates from the Late Pleistocene, more precisely from 46,000 to 63,000 years ago. With it, various mammals from both sites, including water buffalos, rhinos, wild boars, deer, bears, orangutans, macaques, and leopards, were also analysed. All these different animals show various eating behaviours, making for an ideal background to determine what exactly humans were eating at the time. The more diverse the animal remains found at a particular site are, the more information the researchers can use to understand the diet of prehistoric humans.

When we compare the zinc isotope values from the fossil Homo sapiens of Tam Pà Ling to that of the animals, it strongly suggests that its diet contained both plants and animals. This omnivorous diet also differs from most nitrogen isotope data of humans in other regions of the world for that time period, where a meat-rich diet is almost consistently discerned. “Another kind of analysis performed in this study – stable carbon isotopes analysis – indicates that the food consumed came strictly from forested environments”, says Élise Dufour, researcher at the National Natural History Museum of Paris. “The results are the oldest direct evidence for subsistence strategies for Late Pleistocene humans in tropical rainforests.”

Researchers often associated our species with open environments, like savannahs or cold steppes. However, this study shows that early Homo sapienscould adapt to different environments. Together, the zinc and carbon isotope results may suggest a mix of specialized adaptations to tropical rainforests seen from other Southeast Asian archaeological sites. “It will be interesting, in the future, to compare our zinc isotope data with data from other prehistoric human species of Southeast Asia, like Homo erectus and Homo floresiensis, and see if we could understand better why they went extinct while our species survived”, concludes first author Nicolas Bourgon, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

Drinking wine in ancient Greece was a divine but demanding business

Apollo-magizine.com

Garry Shaw

3 September 2021

A small cup, currently on display in the temporary exhibition ‘Drinking with the Gods’ at La Cité du Vin in Bordeaux, held a small surprise for any ancient Greek who’d finished sipping their wine and peered with sadness into its dry, empty interior. A satyr is painted within, his tail in the air as he dives head first into a vat of wine, his own tiny cup left below, untouched. Such behaviour was frowned upon in Greek society, I learn, because drinking wine was a divine affair, involving the proper rituals and respect for the gods, which separated the Greeks from the barbarians. The satyr, it seems, had forgotten his good manners. Luckily for us modern wine-drinkers, there’s no longer any risk of embarrassing ourselves like a drunken satyr, because this intoxicating exhibition explains how we can avoid insulting the Greek and Roman gods or appearing like barbarians.

With around 50 artefacts on display, including loans from the Louvre, ‘Drinking with the Gods’ centres on the role of wine in Graeco-Roman culture, with a large part dedicated to Dionysus, the god who gave wine to humans and – perhaps more importantly – taught us to make it ourselves. Early on, there’s a statue of the god carved into the marble leg of a banqueting table. It shows Dionysus leaning against a pillar, naked, one arm over his head in a gesture of ecstasy (or possibly wondering where he’d last seen his clothes). With his other hand, he pours wine for his panther, his constant companion, present in various artefacts on display. Unmixed with water, the wine drank by panther and god alike was believed to drive mere mortals insane, the exhibition explains. This is useful advice for the Greek-god-fearing among us. The correct way to drink wine is to mix it with water in a large vase called a krater. Then, before taking a cup, you make an offering from it to the gods and say a prayer.

As you explore the exhibition, there’s a bronze image of Dionysus’s drunken mule (not a very efficient way of getting around, I imagine), and paintings and carvings of the satyrs that accompanied the god on his travels – men with goat or horse legs and animal ears. Women called the maenads (‘the mad ones’) were also part of the divinity’s troupe, and were believed to tear you apart if you didn’t welcome Dionysus correctly. It sounds like quite the party – so long as you followed the correct rituals and survived the night.

Further characters from Dionysus’s myths and adventures are also present. The sides of one Greek vase from 490 BC show Dionysus and Heracles meeting for a drinking competition. Pan makes an appearance as a small bronze figure, and we meet a marble statue of the satyr Silenus, Dionysus’s tutor, carved holding a large goatskin of wine. Festivals of Dionysus are represented too, such as the three-day-long Anthesteria (‘Flower Festival’), celebrating the god’s return and new wine; a scene of women offering to a statue of Dionysus during this festival can be seen on a jug from 450–440 BC. The exhibition also explores the god of wine’s incarnation as Bacchus under the Roman Empire.

One highlight is a replica of a huge vase from the 6th century BC discovered in a Celtic princesses’ tomb in France. This could hold 1,100 litres of wine and is apparently the largest known vase from the ancient world – standing before it, you can quite easily imagine diving inside like an ill-mannered satyr. Another reproduction shows a mosaic of a skeleton holding wine jugs, meant to remind banqueters to enjoy their lives.

But there’s more to the exhibition than the ancient artefacts. In one area, you can sit and listen to tales of Dionysus, as told by the slam artist and poet Maras, the words projected on to the walls. A video shows a banqueting scene from Federico Fellini’s film Satyricon (1969). Three modern installations have been created by street artists, inspired by the ancient myths. Atmospheric music drifts across the exhibition space. The imagery on one Italian situla, showing King Maron hosting Dionysus and receiving a vine and drinking vessel in return, has been replicated on a large scale in fabric, which makes its theme – the gift of wine – much clearer, and makes you feel immersed in the scene.

The exhibition is moodily lit with spotlights, creating stark contrasts between dark spaces, the illuminated objects, and the green-themed information panels and labels, which present the objects and their backgrounds in a refreshingly clear, engaging and sometimes almost conversational manner. Interesting cultural details are included throughout – among them, that during the Anthesteria, the Greeks held competitions in which people tried to down their cups of wine in a single gulp.

All of which adds up to a rather delicious blend, mixing old flavours with something new. With the world now slowly opening up again, if you can make it to Bordeaux, ‘Drinking with the Gods’ is an exhibition that you should sample while you still have the chance. And when enjoying a glass of wine afterwards, remember to offer a little to Dionysus.

‘Drinking with the Gods’ is at La Cité du Vin in Bordeaux, France, until 7 November.

The Annual Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

April 1, 2010 by Ancientfoods | Edit Topic: Pasta On April 1, 1957 the British news show Panorama broadcast a three-minute segment about a bumper …

The Annual Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

Happy April everyone!

Ancient poop shows people in present-day Austria drank beer and ate blue cheese up to 2,700 years ago

Original article: eurekalert.org

13-Oct-2021Peer-Reviewed Publication

Cell Press

Human feces don’t usually stick around for long—and certainly not for thousands of years. But exceptions to this general rule are found in a few places in the world, including prehistoric salt mines of the Austrian UNESCO World Heritage area Hallstatt-Dachstein/Salzkammergut. Now, researchers who’ve studied ancient fecal samples (or paleofeces) from these mines have uncovered some surprising evidence: the presence of two fungal species used in the production of blue cheese and beer. The findings appear in the journal Current Biology on October 13.

“Genome-wide analysis indicates that both fungi were involved in food fermentation and provide the first molecular evidence for blue cheese and beer consumption during Iron Age Europe,” says Frank Maixner (@FrankMaixner) of the Eurac Research Institute for Mummy Studies in Bolzano, Italy.

“These results shed substantial new light on the life of the prehistoric salt miners in Hallstatt and allow an understanding of ancient culinary practices in general on a whole new level,” adds Kerstin Kowarik (@KowarikKerstin) of the Museum of Natural History Vienna. “It is becoming increasingly clear that not only were prehistoric culinary practices sophisticated, but also that complex processed foodstuffs as well as the technique of fermentation have held a prominent role in our early food history.”

Earlier studies already had shown the potential for studies of prehistoric paleofeces from salt mines to offer important insights into early human diet and health. In the new study, Maixner, Kowarik, and their colleagues added in-depth microscopic, metagenomic, and proteomic analyses—to explore the microbes, DNA, and proteins that were present in those poop samples.

These comprehensive studies allowed them to reconstruct the diet of the people who once lived there. They also could get information about the ancient microbes that inhabited their guts. Gut microbes are collectively known as the gut microbiome and are now recognized to have an important role in human health.

Their dietary survey identified bran and glumes of different cereals as one of the most prevalent plant fragments. They report that this highly fibrous, carbohydrate-rich diet was supplemented with proteins from broad beans and occasionally with fruits, nuts, or animal food products.

In keeping with their plant-heavy diet, the ancient miners up to the Baroque period also had gut microbiome structures more like those of modern non-Westernized individuals, whose diets are also mainly composed of unprocessed food, fresh fruits and vegetables. The findings suggest a more recent shift in the Western gut microbiome as eating habits and lifestyles changed.

When the researchers extended their microbial survey to include fungi, that’s when they got their biggest surprise: an abundance in one of their Iron Age samples of Penicillium roqueforti and Saccharomyces cerevisiae DNA.

“The Hallstatt miners seem to have intentionally applied food fermentation technologies with microorganisms which are still nowadays used in the food industry,” Maixner says.

The findings offer the first evidence that people were already producing blue cheese in Iron Age Europe nearly 2,700 years ago, he adds. In ongoing and future studies of the paleofeces from Hallstatt, they hope to learn more about the early production of fermented foods and the interplay between nutrition and the gut microbiome composition in different time periods.

###

This work was supported by Programma Ricerca Budget prestazioni Eurac 2017 of the Province of Bolzano, Italy, and the South Tyrolean grant legge 14, the European Regional Development Fund, the European Research Council grant, the US National Institutes of Health, and the US National Science Foundation.

Current Biology, Maixner et al.: “Paleofeces analyses indicate blue cheese and beer consumption by Iron Age Hallstatt salt miners and a non-Westernized gut microbiome structure in Europe until the Baroque period”

Research delves into role of turkeys to Ancestral Pueblo peoples

Original article:phys.org

by Mary Beth King,  University of New Mexico

Research recently published by adjunct assistant professor Cyler Conrad from the Department of Archaeology at The University of New Mexico examines the importance of turkeys to the Ancestral Pueblo people and how they have managed the birds for more than 1,600 years. Evidence of turkeys and various methods of enclosing them is evident in the ancient pueblos all over New Mexico and surrounding areas, making them part of the area’s history.

In “Contextualizing Ancestral Pueblo Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo spp.) Management,” Conrad reviewed the archeological record to focus on three main questions: How turkey pens are identified, if turkey pen construction or evidence for captivity shifts through time, and how the record of turkey penning informs us regarding the long-term human management of these birds and global perspectives on human-bird/human-animal management.

“The research is a large review of archeological evidence for turkey management by Ancestral Pueblo peoples throughout the American Southwest and Mexican Northwest, and by management, I mean keeping turkeys in pens or other enclosed spaces. What I discovered by reading through ethnographic and ethnohistoric descriptions, archeological site reports and publications focused on turkey pen contexts, is that Ancestral Pueblo people participated in a complex relationship with these birds,” Conrad explained. 

In some cases turkeys were penned within rooms in villages; sometimes those rooms were specifically constructed as pens and sometimes they were reused as pens. There is evidence that they were even kept in a room in or near Room 28 in Pueblo Bonito at Chaco Canyon where UNM anthropologist Patricia Crown found cylindrical jars used to consume drinks made of cacao, the first evidence of the consumption of chocolate north of the US-Mexico border. 

“It appears that turkeys were kept in a nearby room, except during the final period of occupation in Room 28 when it may have functioned as a pen itself. This was a really interesting observation which Dr. Crown identified: A possible record of the modification of spaces to fill certain needs at certain times, in this case with turkeys,” Conrad observed.

Turkeys were also allowed to free-range, were kept tied to turkey tethers, and were occasionally held in small cages. Consistent variability in the type of space and context in which Ancestral Pueblo peoples kept turkeys was clearly intentional—an adaptive strategy that allowed flexibility in the management of these birds for a variety of purposes for well over 1,600 years in the Southwest and northwest Mexico.

Conrad also speculates on why turkeys were kept: “Were turkeys raised as pets? For feathers? For food? To increase flock sizes? For egg production? Or perhaps for dozens of other reasons we simply can’t understand as archeologists looking into the past. What I can confirm is that the flexibility in turkey confinement was intentional.”

Turkeys were probably used in more ways than we recognize today. 

“We know at least that their feathers, eggs, bones, meat, and even visual, auditory, and conceptual manifestations were used for a variety of purposes. These include the creation of blankets, paints, tools, musical instruments, food, and art.” 

Indigenous peoples of this region had special and significant relationships with a variety of birds, Conrad noted, such as macaws, eagles, and herons, just to name a few. Chickens were introduced later by the Spanish at contact.

“Birds hold a special place in Pueblo society and we see this record throughout the archeological identification of bird bones, feathers, imagery on ceramics and rock art, and much more. Turkeys are only one of many birds that deserve careful attention when trying to examine human-bird interactions through time,” he added.

To find out more about turkeys and their role in the lives of Ancestral Pueblo people, Conrad examined the record of past excavations and research. 

Turkey pens had a variety of forms and construction in Ancestral Pueblo contexts so it was sometimes challenging to define them. But there is one good way to determine where the birds were kept.

“One of the clearest lines of evidence for identifying a turkey pen within these places is the presence of turkey droppings or dense mats of turkey dung,” Conrad said.

Research has also revealed what turkeys ate, thanks to the UNM Center for Stable Isotopes, where state-of-the-art analytical instrumentation measures certain elements such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen—proxies for bird diets—in organic and inorganic substances. Free-range poultry isn’t a modern concept.

“We know what turkeys ate based on evidence from botanicals in contexts associated with turkeys such as pollen, and rare examples of preserved foods recovered from desiccated and mummified turkeys from this region. All these records indicate that turkeys consumed domesticated maize. But, there are fascinating examples that contradict this record—including evidence from Tijeras Pueblo identified by [UNM anthropologist] Emily Lena Jones. Those turkeys have diets that appear to be more ‘natural’ or free-range, as we like to say,” he elaborated.

Those ancient turkeys aren’t so very far removed from modern wildlife.

“The DNA of the Ancestral Pueblo domesticated turkey survives in some wild Merriam’s turkey populations within the Southwest. So, when you are hunting for turkeys in New Mexico, or simply experience them in the environment, there is likely an aspect of that turkey that is related to the birds, peoples, and experiences described in this research,” he noted, adding, “There is a direct connection between what we perceive as ‘wild’ turkeys within the environment today and their ancestors of the past who interacted with and were managed by Pueblo peoples. It makes this research important because it was the specific conditions in which Ancestral Pueblo peoples managed these birds that allowed for this current relationship.”

Archaeologists explore culinary culture of Lydians with dental tools

original article: dailysabah.com

Archaeologists seek clues of the culinary culture and eating habits of the Lydians in the excavations of the ancient city of Daskyleion, located on the shores of Lake Manyas in the Bandırma district of western Balıkesir province, using various dental tools.

The excavation team, headed by Kaan Iren – a lecturer at Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University Faculty of Letters Archaeology Department – continue their work in and around the 2,600-year-old kitchen structure found three years ago in Daskyleion. The team prefers small, sensitive instruments used in dentistry such as forceps and spatulas. With these tools, delicate finds such as pottery, fish spines, seeds and plant remains that have not been destroyed and remained intact can be carefully removed.

Iren told Anadolu Agency (AA) that they named the section where the Lydian kitchen is found “Akro Daskyleion.”

Stating that a Lydian palace was destroyed by a fire and the kitchen was affected by this, Iren said, “Our research and excavations have been continuing in this kitchen for years, without skipping any data. We continue our work by slowly digging with very sensitive tools, fine brushes and needles and documenting all data.”

Büşra Atalar Yeter, a postgraduate in charge of the Lydian kitchen excavation team, said that they investigated the relationship between the kitchen structure and other areas during their work this year. Stating that they had revealed places that could be cellars, according to their research, Atalar said: “We found burned mud brick blocks in these areas. These probably belong to a cellar destroyed by a collapsed wall because we obtained various bones and different types of seeds from the surrounding area.”

“In order to preserve the data, we have analyzed our work in detail and meticulously. Therefore, we continue to work with small dental tools,” she added.