<div dir="ltr"><div><font face="georgia,serif">Good Morning Visionaries:</font></div><div><font face="georgia,serif"></font><br></div><div><font face="georgia,serif">For those who do not take the DNews here is the version of last Thursday's column that will appear in the Sandpoint Reader tomorrow. The full version is attached. You will find two confessions at the end of this version.</font></div><div><font face="georgia,serif"></font><br></div><div><font face="georgia,serif">Celebrating the Neanderthal genes in all of us,</font></div><div><font face="georgia,serif"></font><br></div><div><font face="georgia,serif">nfg</font></div><div><font face="georgia,serif"></font><br></div><div><font face="georgia,serif"></font><br clear="all">
<p align="center" style="margin:0px 0px 11px;text-align:center;line-height:150%"><b><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif">The
Neanderthals Ate Their Veggies, Too</font></span></b></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;text-align:left;line-height:150%"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="margin:0px"> </span>Sometime after I told a friend that
I had become a vegetarian, I saw a new bumper sticker on his truck.<span style="margin:0px"> </span>It read: “Vegetarian: Old Indian Word for
Poor Hunter.” For years I’ve been preparing the following verbal arrows as a
reply.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="margin:0px"> </span>Of course Paleolithic peoples ate
lots of meat, but their diet was supplemented with roots, fungi, fruit, and
other non-meat items. <a name="m_-4738681170518626450__Hlk499016929">Sacagawea saved the Lewis &
Clark expedition from starvation by providing the men such nutritious items
such as wild licorice, prairie turnips, and wild artichokes. She also knew of a
number of medicinal plants, which we now have learned even Neanderthals used.</a></font></span></p>
<span style="margin:0px"></span>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="margin:0px"> </span>For 150,000 years the San of
Southern Africa, better known as Bushmen, have thrived on the bounty of the
Kalahari Desert.<span style="margin:0px"> </span>A 1960s study measured
San food consumption, and only 27 percent consisted of meat, and the rest was
14 percent nuts and 51 percent other plant foods. Some of the tasty items
include wild oranges, wild mangoes, two types of berries, sour plums, beans,
and melon. </font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="margin:0px"> </span>For years I have been fascinated by
the Neanderthals, and I have a small library of books and articles attesting to
their intelligence, ingenuity, and perseverance in Ice Age Europe and Central
Asia. </font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="margin:0px"> </span>Early estimates of the Neanderthal
diet showed a very high level of protein consumption, so high that it would
have proved toxic over time.<span style="margin:0px"> </span>The almost
exclusive meat diet of the Intuit has a very high fat content, very different
from the lean meat of the megafauna of Northern Europe. Pemmican, a mixture of
rendered fat, dried berries, and pulverized dried meat, was the main portable
food source for North American Indians.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="margin:0px"> </span>Biogeologists at the University of
Tübingen have done an analysis of the collagen of Neanderthal bones, and they
have discovered that the diet of these individuals would have been at least 20
percent plant-based. </font></span><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="margin:0px"> </span>Another study of dental plaque from
two different sites in Belgium and Spain shows a dramatic contrast. The Belgian
Neanderthals ate mostly wooly rhinoceroses and wild sheep, while their Spanish
cousins consumed large amounts of moss, pine nuts, and mushrooms.<a name="m_-4738681170518626450__Hlk498250024"> Were these just “poor hunters,” as my friend’s bumper
sticker mocks, or just healthier and smarter Neanderthals?</a></font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="margin:0px"><b><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><span style="margin:0px"> </span></span></b></span><span style="margin:0px"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%">Even more
intriguing was evidence that these clever Spanish Neanderthals used plants for
medicinal purposes. One jaw bone indicated that pain from an abscess had been
relieved by salicylic acid (aspirin) extracted from the poplar tree. The same
individual was also treating diarrhea with a mold that is the source of
modern-day penicillin. </span></span></font><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="margin:0px"> </span>A 2014 study analyzed fossilized
fecal matter from El Salt, another Spanish Neanderthal site. This direct
evidence clinched the theory that our ancient cousins were not exclusively meat
eaters. Biomarkers for meat and plants were found in a 2-1 ratio, and a good
deal of this plant material was from tubers in addition to above-ground plants.
Neanderthals would have had digging sticks in addition to spears.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="margin:0px"> </span>One of my favorite <i>Far Side </i>cartoons by the ever-zany Gary
Larson is entitled “Vegetarians Home from the Hunt.” It shows a gaggle of Paleolithic men
carrying a carrot the size of a truck. Yes, there were many huge animals, but
there were no mega vegetables of the sort we buy at the supermarket.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="margin:0px"> </span>Writing for <i>National Geographic</i>, Rebecca Rupp explains: “Ancient tomatoes were
the size of berries [as I once observed them on a Galapagos island], and
potatoes were no bigger than peanuts. Cucumbers were spiny as sea urchins;
lettuce was bitter and prickly. Carrots were scrawny.”</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="margin:0px"> </span>We can imagine that Neanderthal
males were great grill masters, but we now have evidence that they also boiled
their meat as well. Drawing on evidence of boiled grains and boiled bones,
University of Michigan archaeologist John Speth believes that this was done in
either hide pouches or birch bark containers.<span style="margin:0px">
</span></font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%;text-indent:0.5in"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif">As Speth explains: “You can boil in just
about anything as long as you take it off the flame pretty quickly,” or a slow boil
over coals. He enhances his argument by noting that Neanderthals must have
boiled the pitch they used to haft their spear tips.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif"><span style="margin:0px"> </span>In addition to worshipping animal
spirits, a la Jean Auel’s <i>Clan of the
Cave Bear</i>, Neanderthals surely gave thanks to Mother Earth as well. <span style="margin:0px"> </span>So, we can imagine that on an auspicious day
of this season, men carved the meat, the women chopped scrawny but nutritious
vegetables, and they dropped them in a birch bark “pot.” They then would have had
a hearty stew for a Neanderthal Thanksgiving.</font></span></p>
<p style="margin:0px 0px 11px;line-height:150%;text-indent:0.5in"><span style="margin:0px;color:black;line-height:150%"><font face="georgia,serif">Nick Gier of Moscow taught philosophy at the
University of Idaho for 31 years.<span style="margin:0px"> </span></font></span></p>
<font color="#000000"></font><font face="georgia,serif"><br>-- </font><br></div><div class="m_-4738681170518626450gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div> <div style="width:auto;height:auto"> <div> <div><div><font face="georgia,serif"></font><br></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><font face="georgia,serif">A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. <br><br>-Greek proverb</font></div><div><font face="georgia,serif"><br>
“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not
in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it
without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your
own understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.<br>
<br>
--Immanuel Kant<br>
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