A reminder that links do break. I try to keep them current but things change. If you find a broken one, leave me a message in the comments and I’ll try to fix it.
We read Robert Spengler III’s Fruit from the Sands over two months. This is the summary for the first half of the book.
The author’s website is titled Central Eurasian Archaeobotany. It is a very thorough and amazing site with loads of information that expand on the information in the book. There are also links to interviews with him, et cetera. I think the website has been updated since the first time I checked it because there are now video interviews with him. At that time, all I could find was one written interview. Not exciting watching but interesting reading:
Now I am finding video links on his website, such as this one for an hour-long talk at NYU. According to Spengler’s website this talk is a great way to get a “taste” the research and the topics covered in the book.
One of the things I liked about the book was how Spengler would present something that was published and then suggest some alternative explanations and even a bit of how they could be tested, in some cases. Or what to look for as new finds come to light. I didn’t show this but it reminded of my days teaching critical thinking. One component is what are alternative explanations for the information you have gathered. I picked out this video for those who might want to look into the tools that are used/the questions that are developed to think more critically. There are, of course, about a billion other options to learn more.
I had this idea that I would look up all the plants, mostly grains, that were discussed and have fascinating videos on all of them. Didn’t happen. Partly because there don’t seem to be fascinating videos on all of them. Just saying.
The one crop I did look into a bit was millet. With a family name of Panicum, some of the grasses seem to be known as panic grasses. I don’t know that I got it all sorted out but here’s a bit of information on panic grass. Gary Paul Nabhan’s work on seed collection is mentioned in the article.
This 1 minute video is about white wonder foxtail millet as a cover crop. It certainly looks like what I call foxtail grass and now I’m wondering if those weeds in my yard might actually be edible millet…. This video was by the Noble Research Institute so then I looked them up. They seem to be focused on regenerative ranching and agricultural research. Their website has lots of information from the cover crop docuseries where I found the video to recipes. Another resource to spend time learning more….
I had this idea as I read the book that it would be really helpful if there were a video showing the movement of the plants over the thousands of years of plant domestication and trade along the ever-moving Silk and Spice Roads/Routes. I didn’t find one but I did find this interesting website that seems to want to do a similar thing: Paleon. They are looking at trees on the North American continent and one of their products is/will be dynamic maps. It looks like an interesting project that will be worth checking in on now and then. According to their home page: “PalEON (the Paleo-Ecological Observatory Network) is an interdisciplinary team of paleoecologists, ecological statisticians, and ecosystem modelers from across a number of institutions. Our goal is to reconstruct forest composition, fire regime, and climate in forests across the northeastern US and Alaska over the past 2000 years and then use this to drive and validate terrestrial ecosystem models.”
During the discussion, a couple other topics came up. One person mentioned Guns, Germs, and Steel. That book (which I hadven’t read) seems to be more about agriculture per se (and how a relatively stable source of food led to all sorts of development and aggression) versus the transport of agricultural goods around Eurasia and trying to tease out when the said foods were domesticated and where. Still, there are likely connections between the two books.
Referring to the spice cardamom, which is actually in the second part of the book, someone mentioned cardamom syrup. In looking on the internet for a recipe and more information, I came across a site – probably there are several – that sells the plant. It would have to be an indoor plant here but what a temptation to have a tall houseplant filling the house with the scent of cardamom…. A place called Pink House Alchemy sells cardamom syrup so you don’t have to grow the tree first.
And, of course, there are about a billion choices on amazon.