Moldy Monday VII

Scientists have recently discovered what is now the oldest known fossil of a human ancestor. Named Ardipithecus ramidus, or “Ardi,” this fossil dates back more than one million years before the famous “Lucy,” walked the earth 3.2 million years ago.

The National Geographic article about Ardi is incredibly fascinating and insightful. Many are claiming that Ardi’s discovery puts to rest the notion of a “missing link” between humans and today’s apes. You can check it out here.

(Photo Credit: National Geographic Society)

Moldy Monday VI

Dear Children,

Your teachers are lying to you. Christopher Columbus did not discover America. He was actually a racist bigot who died thinking he had discovered a way around the world to India. He also did not prove that the world was round. The concept that the earth was round dates back to the 6th century, almost 1000 years before Columbus would sail across the Atlantic. You can read up on that here.

Sorry for the short blog post today folks, I have a midterm to study for. Wish me luck!

Moldy Monday V

Today, I’m going to talk about, that’s right,

corn.

Corn was one of the first crops to be domesticated in the Americas (approximately 5,100 BC) and has had a tremendous impact on food and agriculture ever since.

Corn (Zea mays) as we know it didn’t come around until the last few hundred years. When corn was first domesticated, it was actually a variety of wild grass called teosinte.

The “ears” were tiny and useless and usually thrown out. The teosinte was instead harvested for the sugars in the stalk, which, among other things, could be used to make a form of alcohol. Over the years, farmers began to genetically alter teosinte by planting seeds from the plants that yielded the biggest, most colorful, or otherwise desirable ears of corn, giving us the large variety of corn that we have today.

So the next time you’re eating an ear of “corn on the cob” or grimacing down a mouthful of creamed corn, think about the thousands of years of careful cultivation and domestication that made that bite possible.

Moldy Monday IV

Thank you so much for your post yesterday Alyssa! It made my entire day week year

*I can’t think of a witty/relevant transition into today’s blog, so I’ll just leave you with this awkward sentence*

In 1974, a few local farmers from the Xi’an, China, were drilling a well when they discovered one of the most elaborate archaeological finds to date: the Terracotta Army.

The Terracotta army consists of an estimated 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses. Built as a form of funerary art for the First Emperor Qin (Qin Shi Huang), it is believed the purpose of the statues was to help rule another empire with Shi Huang in the afterlife.

The terracotta figures were manufactured both in workshops by government laborers and also by local craftsmen. The head, arms, legs and torsos were created separately and then assembled. Studies show that eight face molds were most likely used, and then clay was added to provide individual facial features. That’s right; each face of the more than 8,000 statues had individual facial features.

The terracotta figures are life-like and life-sized. They vary in height, uniform and hairstyle in accordance with rank. The colored lacquer finish, individual facial features, and actual weapons and armor from battle were used in manufacturing these figures created a realistic appearance. The original weapons were stolen by robbers shortly after the creation of the army and the coloring has faded greatly. However, their existence serves as a testament to the amount of labor and skill involved in their construction as well as the power the First Emperor possessed in the early days of the Qin Dynasty.

(Photo Credit: Worldmysteries.com, China Connection Tours)

Moldy Monday III

For today’s Moldy Monday post, I want to direct you to this article. Proof that it doesn’t matter how old an archaeological site is; there’s always something to discover.

Moldy Monday II

As I mentioned in my first Moldy Monday post, I’m majoring in Anthropology at The Ohio State University. Unfortunately, when I tell people this, I usually either get blank stares or people saying, “Oh! So you’re gonna dig up bones!”

*sighs and shakes head*

So what exactly is Anthropology?

In the most simple way, Anthropology is the study of what it means to be human. There are 4 different areas in the field of Anthropology:

Culture can be defined as a uniquely human means of non-biological adaptation; a repertoire of learned behaviors for coping with the physical and social environments. There are two branches of cultural anthropology: ethnology and ethnography.

Ethnology is the study of contemporary human societies through firsthand observation (think Margaret Mead)whereas ethnography is a study of human behavior cross-culturally, looking for similarities and differences in how people behave.

Biological anthropology (or physical anthropology) studies the mechanisms of biological evolution, genetic inheritance, human adaptability and variation, primatology, primate morphology, and the fossil record of human evolution.

Linguistic anthropology focuses on the formation and relationships between human languages and the relationships between language and culture.

And finally…

Sacred Indian stones, booby-trapped treasures, and scheming Nazis aside, archaeology is the scientific study of human cultures (past and present) by analyzing the material remains that people leave behind (whereas history is the analysis of documentary sources). The goal of archaeology is to explain the dynamics of culture change by focusing on culture as humanity’s primary adaptive mechanism. And yes, digging up bones.

Moldy Monday

For those of you who may not know, I’m studying Anthropology at The Ohio State University. In light of this, a friend of mine told me that I should talk about what I’ve learned on my blag. Thus, Moldy Monday was created. I’ll start the Moldy Monday series by debunking a very widely held belief about the Pyramids of Egypt.

Myth: the pyramids were built by slaves and prisoners of war, forced to do back-breaking and often deadly work in under their merciless Egyptian rulers.

This belief is backed up by many Judeo-Christian interpretations of the Israelite slaves in Egypt. Most notably in The Ten Commandments, the widely known and loved movie staring Charlton Heston. (A great movie, by the way, for those who have never seen it. You can watch the trailer below in all its cheesy 1950′s movie trailer glory.)

I could go in a million directions from here and talk about the movie, or the story of Moses, or Charlton Heston’s great movie career, but I’ll have to save all that for a later post. I have a myth to bust.

Recent studies have shown that the pyramids were not built by slaves, but by privileged workers who were proud and honored to help in the building of their pharaoh’s final resting place. The quarters where the pyramid builders lived were larger than the expected cramped slave’s quarters. Evidence, in the appearance of an abundance of cattle bones, also shows that those who lived in these houses had priority in the food they were supplied, and even occasionally ate better than some noble families in Egypt. Most recently, there was a discovery of what archaeologists might call “ancient graffiti” where a worker had left a message inside one of the pyramids, announcing his pride in being able to contribute to the building a monument for his beloved pharaoh.

While much additional research is needed to discover more about the pyramid builders, how they lived, and why they were chosen, the monuments that they built still manage to fascinate and captivate the mind, much as they did 3000 years ago, and it is my hope that they will for 3000 years more.