Corn or beef?

The idea of agriculture being one of the worst human developments along with the car isn't something I'd ever thought about before starting university. One thing I find interesting is that once the shift from a nomadic or hunter gatherer to sedentary lifestyle began, we began to find traces of this in the bones of remains. What we begin to find is evidence of malnutrition from the low protein high carbohydrate diet focusing mainly on grains. If I remember correctly from my early archaeological classes, agriculture, or crop growing began around 10,000 years ago.
While cruising an archeological website, I came across a really short article stating that early Andeans ate corn 5,000 years ago. Within the short article, which is about a paragraph and a half long, it states that Andeans ate corn for survival and possibly for ceremonial purposes. The evidence was found in pollen samples in teeth and tool analysis. Originally, it was thought that people of the Peruvian Andes depended on marine life for survival but now it is fair to assume that those people were also farming corn. I suppose the point I am trying to reach with this article is that I don't like the way they portray corn as being a "survival food" when ocean resources are available. I just find it interesting how human food culture shifted from a relatively high protein and fibrous diet (mind you, difficult to find/catch/kill) to a diet that we have become to rely on such as crops and fields of wheat, grains and corn. I often think about whether or not humans would turn back time 10,000 years and never change the foraging patterns or keep them how they happened to develop. The skeletons found during times of severe agriculture reliance are evidence that maybe it isn't the best thing to be "surviving" off of and maybe we should look back to our roots and see where we took a wrong turn.


http://www.archaeology.org/news/603-130226-peru-andes-corn

Stuffed Stephanie

Yesterday I was cruising my favorite website in some of my spare time, and stumbled across an article about taxidermy. The article profiles a young female taxidermist who considers herself a 'recycler' of dead animals into art. She basically goes around finding roadkill or dead animals and recycling them into artistic poses or functional pieces. She seems completely fine with skinning and stuffing animals, but the whole idea of de-fleshing a carcass of an animal completely grosses me out but fascinates me at the same time. If I had a stronger stomach I might even consider watching a youtube video of how the process is done. Anyway, what brings me to write about this article I read was one of the last comments in the interview. The interviewer asks the woman whether or not she would ever consider doing taxidermy on a human! She says that if it was legal, she wouldn't shy away from the idea. This idea actually links into the blog prompt for this week quite nicely. If we had other options other than cremation or graves, how would you like to be 'disposed of' (for lack of a better word). I'm not sure I'd want to be a full life sized feature of someones home (that might bring about a bit more anxiety than love of seeing a stuffed human hanging out on your couch in the living room). However, if there were other options, I think I would be fully on board with doing something creative with my body after death. I think I would have my body compressed into some sort of jewellery that my family could wear and take with them. I think that would be a good way of remembering versus stuffing me and having me chilling in the house. I can only imagine how frightening it would be if someone decided to play a joke and start hiding stuffed Stephanie around the house. ... in the closet, behind the coats, behind the shower curtain....... Only someone with as terrible a sense of humour as I have would even consider doing that.


Here is the article I was reading if you'd like to take a look. It's pretty neat!
http://www.vice.com/en_ca/read/if-its-dead-nicola-jayne-hebson-will-stuff-it


Cheers!