Category: Mainstream

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Pickled olives

During my recent trip to Syria I visited the world’s largest restaurant. I thought that was really cool and I wanted to at least mention it here, but could think of no excuse until a couple of stories appeared about a Middle Eastern food staple appeared in the news and I could resist no longer. I wonder how many olives the Bawabet Dimash needs to haul in every day to supply its 6,014 tables. Olive cultivation has really been booming in Syria during the past 20 years, expanding into large areas that were formerly little more than rocky pastures. I saw some huge newish plantations around Aleppo, for example. There are lots of different varieties in Syria, but I got the feeling that only one or two account for most of the expansion. These areas are likely to get drier with climate change, so I don’t know how sustainable the expansion is.

Meanwhile, further south, the olive harvest in the West Bank is being affected by some very unpleasant incidents. The olive is a mainstay of what remains of the Palestinian economy, and this is bound to impact people’s already sorely stressed livelihoods. I suspect not much of the West Bank’s production in currently being exported, but if and when it does start being marketed in Europe, it will have to cope with some sharp-nosed Italian police officers.

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American farmers got stoned a lot

Two articles this morning both point to the widespread use of hallucinogenic plants in ancient South America. National Geographic reports that traces of the mind-altering substance harmine have been found in the hair of Tiwanaku mummies from the coastal Chilean desert dating back to 800-1200 AD. Harmine comes from the Amazonian vine Banisteriopsis caapi, which suggests that an extensive trade network linked the rainforest to the desert. Elaborate sniffing kits have been found in many Tiwanaku tombs and also, as a Times article points out, at the other end of the continent in the Caribbean. Archaeologists have found ceramic bowls and inhaling tubes on the island of Carriacou and have identified them as originating in South America between 100-400 BC. The drug of choice in this case may have been cohoba.

So why was everyone getting high?

Richard Davenport-Hines, a former history lecturer at the London School of Economics and author of The Pursuit of Oblivion, a global history of narcotics, believes humans have been using drugs for thousands of years. “Drug use became widespread in many early agriculture-based societies simply because it was the only way people could cope with spending long hours working in the fields, often in horrible conditions like baking sun,” he said.