Fancy chemistry on potsherds from a 6000-year-old Neolithic settlement on Lake Constance has revealed traces of “fat residues of pre-industrial ruminant milk, and young suckling calf/lamb adipose.” So, people drank milk and ate calf meat in Central Europe in 4000 BC. (Via.) That’s a follow-up to a paper a couple of years back giving evidence for cheese and yoghurt making in the late Neolithic.
Nibbles: Maize squared, Urban Ag, Traditional farming, Rice, Extension, Training, Pine nuts, Beer, Markets
- More on ancient maize. Old popcorn contains interesting DNA diversity.
- How teosinte became maize.
- Urban Harvest has a new web site. Via.
- Khadin cultivation system contributes to sustainability in Rajasthan.
- Vietnamese farmers helping their African brethren grow rice.
- Agricultural development officer delivers training on village-level seed management, then hands out improved seed.
- Former student waxes lyrical about UP Los Baños.
- Pine nuts.
- Brewing medieval and modern juxtaposed.
- Working out fair trade.
Mathilda blogs cattle
I’ve been reading Mathilda37’s interesting blog about human evolution for a while now. What makes her particularly worth following from our eeyrie here at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog is that she frequently writes about domesticates too. Case in point: she’s just done a very useful roundup of DNA studies of cattle. Roundup. Cattle. Geddit?
Nibbles: Agave, Fruits, Rotation, Potato, Dogs, Banana, Egypt, Sagittaria latifolia, Cooking
- Tequila!
- Fruitipedia.
- Rotation rediscovered.
- Japan potatoes diversify.
- The genetics of dog behaviour.
- Freakonomist pleads for information. Is the banana doomed, or what?
- Ancient Egyptians stored grain and wine.
- 3,600 year old wapato tubers found in Canada. Wawhat?
- Sarko wants UNESCO to protect French cuisine. Yeah because on its own it just doesn’t have a chance.
Nibbles: Bananas, Wheat, Cameroon, Bees, Eden, Millennium Villages, Organic, Yam, Ag origins, Apricots
- Compare and contrast the banana and the Big Mac. Dan Koeppel takes it to the masses.
- Lamenting the loss of “amber waves of grain”. Ingrate.
- Cameroon’s agriculture vulnerable to climate change. I’ll alert the media.
- Look what I got you for National Pollinator Week next week; a World Checklist of Bees. Neat-o.
- Celebrate food and farmers in Eden.
- “The core of the strategy is a short-term provision of improved seeds suited to the local environment and fertilizers like Di-Ammonium Phosphate (DAP) and urea accompanied by advice on how to use them.” Sounds familiar…
- Meanwhile, in non-Millennium Villages: “While his maize cobs were smaller than others, the seed was of a much higher quality; the fibre of his cotton was also much longer.”
- Japanese yam fields in peril. Yams as in Dioscorea or sweet potato or what? So annoying.
- Neolithic myths?
- California apricot grower explores Central Asia, comes up trumps. Jeremy comments: CandyCots? I think I want to be sick.