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+--- Thread: Rats preserve historical treasures + Eat like the ancient Babylonians (/thread-7853.html)
Rats preserve historical treasures + Eat like the ancient Babylonians - C C - Nov 19, 2019
Eat Like The Ancient Babylonians: Researchers Cook Up Nearly 4,000-Year-Old Recipes
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/11/16/779930201/eat-like-the-ancient-babylonians-researchers-cook-up-nearly-4-000-year-old-recip
INTRO: What did a meal taste like nearly 4,000 years ago in ancient Babylonia? Pretty good, according to a team of international scholars who have deciphered and are re-creating what are considered to be the world's oldest-known culinary recipes. The recipes were inscribed on ancient Babylonian tablets that researchers have known about since early in the 20th century but that were not properly translated until the end of the century.
[...] "The tablets all list recipes that include instructions on how to prepare them," the authors write in a piece about their work published in Lapham's Quarterly earlier this year. "One is a summary collection of twenty-five recipes of stews or broths with brief directions. The other two tablets contain fewer recipes, each described in much more detail."
So far, the cooking team — which also includes a food historian, a curator, a chemical biologist specializing in food, a professional chef and an expert on cultural heritage — has re-created three stews. "One is a beet stew, one is vegetarian, and the final one has lamb in it," says Barjamovic. NPR's Scott Simon spoke with Barjamovic about the research. A transcript of their conversation, edited for clarity, follows... (MORE - interview)
Rats' Nests Are Full of Treasures: From Ancient Seeds to Scraps of Clothing
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/archaeological-treasures-hidden-rat-nests-180973544/
EXCERPT: Calling a person a pack rat may be considered an insult to most ... In the scientific community, however, literal pack rats and other rodents play an important role in preserving history. The materials that rats collect and store in their nests, from naturally occurring items like sticks and seeds to human creations like trinkets and tchotchkes, are a treasure trove for scientists and historians alike.
[...] Pack rats, also known as wood rats, are notorious for collecting an odd assortment of items from their surroundings to make their nests, called middens. ... Pack rats pee all over their nests, and in arid climates (like deserts), the urine crystallizes as it dries. This preserves the items inside the middens, but it also presents a challenge to scientists studying the finds. “...once it crystallizes, it’s rock hard,” says ... ecologist Camille Holmgren. “In order to collect middens, we often need a rock hammer and a big flooring chisel to hammer away at these things because they’re often cemented to the rocks.”
[...] amberat, the ancient pee-hardened middens ... has to soak for at least a week to break down the urine and extract leaves, seeds and twigs from an ancient world. Once the amberat disintegrates, Holmgren and fellow scientists can carbon date the plants inside these natural time capsules. Scientists have found specimens up to 50,000 years old ... Biologist Robert Harbert ... also studies pack rat middens to learn about past climates, including from the last ice age some 25,000 years ago. ... Scientists can estimate rainfall, temperature and other conditions of ancient climates based on the kinds of plants they find in amberat...
[...] On the Atlantic coast of the U.S., rats preserve their treasures behind makeshift walls rather than through fossilization because the climate is not dry enough to form amberat. Thanks to these little hoarders, historians have learned new details about the lives of the enslaved workers across the southeastern United States, including in the Nathaniel Russell house. ... Among the mass of organic matter, they found sewing pins, buttons, marbles, part of a uniform waistcoat, and even fragments of printed paper that could be dated to November 1833. The paper was darkened and curled but still legible once it was gently opened. ... Common rats that surely plagued the occupants of the kitchen house on Nathaniel Russell’s estate have left behind an invaluable cache of items that reveal new details about the lives of people who are too frequently absent in the historical record. (MORE - details)