Six on History: Food
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"Colonists at Jamestown — one of the first English colonies in North America — likely killed and ate local dogs, new research shows.
Most of the dog bones excavated at Jamestown have cut marks on them, suggesting that "it is possible that they were eaten," study co-author Ariane Thomas, a doctoral student of biological anthropology at the University of Iowa, told Live Science in an email.
But given the starvation and evidence for human cannibalism at Jamestown, it is not surprising that people ate dogs, Thomas said.
Nowadays, in contrast, most dog breeds in North America are of European ancestry. The researchers presented their findings March 24 at the American Association of Biological Anthropologists annual meeting, though the research has not yet undergone peer-review.
Founded by the English in Virginia in 1607, Jamestown was the first English colony in the United States that was not abandoned. The English previously tried to settle Roanoke Island, in North Carolina, around 1587, but that attempt ended in disaster with the colonists disappearing.
Jamestown nearly ended in disaster too, with food shortages wiping out many of the colonists. Some starving individuals became so desperate, they resorted to human cannibalism. However, the colony persevered and eventually grew.
DNA researchTo learn more about Jamestown's pups, the team took DNA samples from the remains of six dogs excavated from Jamestown within the last 30 years. Only two of them "had enough sequence fragments to assemble a near-complete mitochondrial genome," or DNA that is passed from mother to offspring via the mitochondria in cells, Thomas said. The tests revealed that the dogs' maternal lineage came from the A1b haplotype, which is associated with indigenous dogs from North America. The team has not yet done testing to determine the paternal lineage of those dogs.
The findings suggest the people of Jamestown may have gotten some of the continent's original dogs through trade or other interactions with Native American groups.
"Based on archaeological research and historical documents, Jamestown was a place of interaction between European colonists and the Indigenous communities [living in the region]," Thomas said.
"It is likely that these dogs accompanied Indigenous people while those individuals were visiting — or perhaps living in — Jamestown," Thomas said.
These dogs were probably not "pets" that belonged to any one person, however. "The dogs were possibly the equivalent of stray dogs today," she noted.
Scholars reactSeveral experts told Live Science that the findings are consistent with other historical evidence from the time.
"This study confirms historical primary source evidence suggesting that English colonists and Powhatans [a Native American group that lived in the area] interacted with each other at Jamestown," Rachel Herrmann, a senior lecturer of modern American history at Cardiff University in the United Kingdom, told Live Science in an email.
"I am not surprised by these findings [they seem] logical based on earlier genetic studies of living as well as ancient American dogs," Peter Savolainen, a professor and head of the department of gene technology at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, told Live Science.
The research is "quite interesting," said Eric Guiry, a lecturer in biomolecular archaeology at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom.
"Bushwick resident Mike Varley, 38, spent 13 months tasting bagels from 202 bagel places in the city, coming up with a ranking and score for each one before compiling an interactive map displaying the locations with an icon grade and scores based on a five-point scale.
According to Varley, the best bagel place is Hot Bagels (P&C Bagels) at 7905 Metropolitan Ave. in Middle Village, earning a score of 4.75 out of 5.
“First, it operated as a means of controlled comparison,” Varley said. “Second, both options allow for creativity and variety in preparation while still being among the most popular order options.”
He splits his reviews into three categories: store, bagel and cream cheese. Additionally, Varley said he tried to identify what may be unique about each experience. His reviews typically take about an hour to write.
Varley described this project as an offshoot of one he began in 2020 called Total Clarity when he and his wife walked in five marathons a week in a year for a total of 7,000 miles across the five boroughs of the city.
“Pretty early on I realized I had a unique opportunity to survey all that NYC bagels had to offer — both because I would be visiting every neighborhood and because I’d be burning the bagels off with a marathon a day,” Varley said.
QNS reached out to P&C Bagels for comment and is waiting for a response.
Varley said he is already looking into adding more stores that he missed or may have opened up after the list. He said popular demand has been dictating which ones he has or intends to try.
According to Everything is Everything, the ideal bagel store has a combination of “second nature intangibles and intimate familiarity with services offered.” While he admits more established stores are usually at an advantage, more contemporary stores can certainly catch up with thoughtful intentions, customer engagement and flexibility to experiment with services.
“A ‘5’ bagel store represents the ultimate in presentation, product freshness, order management and bagel staff skill,” Varley said.
While Everything is Everything does provide detailed reviews, Varley emphasizes that the grading system for bagels is still subjective.
According to Varley, “the qualities of an elite bagel are peak freshness, a strong chew identity, compelling flavor and texture dialogue between topping and dough and its ability to enhance the applied spread via radiant heating, texture complement or otherwise.”
When it comes to cream cheese, the application plays a big role in deciding the score.
“Too little creates a persistent feeling of longing, too much is a logistical nightmare of spread management and bagel obfuscation,” Varley said. “Messy preparation can result in constant napkin grabbing that mars the experience.”
In addition to application amount and technique, other factors Varley considers when judging the cream cheese are viscosity, dairy perspective, scallion texture, scallion flavoring and interplay with the bagel.
Varley also created a post on his website explaining what he refers to as “The Ten Bagel Axioms.” These axioms are:
- Do not toast a bagel if you know it is hot or fresh.
- Toasting raises the floor of a bagel but lowers the ceiling.
- Bagels from appetizing stores are designed to be eaten with lox.
- Stores that put effort into their spread displays generally make good bagels.
- Higher trafficked stores beget frequently fresher bagels beget higher trafficked stores.
- While some bagels are worth waiting for, never underestimate the pleasure of a 30-second bagel transaction executed by a bagel store pro.
- Caraway seed is the best non-standard everything topping, and the least used.
- At their peak, bagels are the barbeque of breakfast: heavy, savory and almost too messy to bear.
- An irregularly shaped bagel will almost always taste better than a perfectly round bagel.
- If you can smell the bagels, you’re in the right place."
"Ramadan is the ninth and most sacred month in the Muslim calendar, a time of reflection, piety and charity for Muslims (even for those who are not particularly religious) when they fast from sunrise to sunset without even a drop of water going through their lips. It is said that the prophet Muhammad first received the Quran during Ramadan — and it is the only month mentioned in the Holy Book.
The dates change every year because Muslims follow the lunar calendar (this year Ramadan starts on April 12). The first day occurs with the sighting of the new moon and the last when the moon has reached its full cycle. The end of the month is marked by Eid al-Fitr (the feast of breaking the fast), which runs over three days when families and friends gather to celebrate.
Throughout the Islamic world, people break their daily fast as soon as the muezzin (the man who gives the call to daily prayers in the mosque) announces the setting of the sun. They ease back into eating and drinking by first sipping water, or they might select a sweet drink made by soaking apricot leather in water (in the Levant) or coconut milk-based drinks packed with jellied sweets (in Indonesia). Many will then follow with a few dates — always an odd number (one, three or five) and never too many — to follow the example of the prophet, who is said to have broken his fast with three dates. The faithful then retire to say the Maghrib (sunset) prayer before sitting down to their first meal of the day, known as iftar in the Arab world. ...
Tharid is typical to the Arab Gulf, in particular Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. It’s a composite dish that starts by spreading a layer of broken pieces of regag (a thin cracker-like bread made by rolling a soft ball of dough over a large round hot metal plate until it leaves a thin layer all over and cooks). That layer is then steeped in lamb broth; more regag is added and steeped in additional broth until there is a thick layer of bread, which is then topped with the meat and vegetables (usually carrots, zucchini and potatoes) that have been cooked in the broth.
Vegetables and lamb simmer in an aromatic stew that moistens crisp flatbread in this Arabian dish.
There are variations on tharid throughout the Middle East: The Levantine version is known as fatteh, the Moroccan one goes by trid, and the Iranian one is known as dizi. Unlike tharid, where the dry bread is soaked with broth until it becomes very moist and silky, the pita bread used for fatteh is toasted or fried and is expected to stay fairly crisp for a lovely contrast in textures.
"In 2018, the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer merged with St. Louis-based chemical company Monsanto, creating a global chemical and agribusiness behemoth. As the largest producer of genetically engineered seeds in the world, Monsanto has transformed the way we do agriculture. But as Monsanto has risen, it’s also faced a rising anti-GMO movement and new lawsuits alleging their herbicides have done harm to human health. In this Q&A from The Fifth Draft — the National Fellows Program newsletter — 2017 New America National Fellow Bart Elmore discusses his forthcoming book, Seed Money: Monsanto's Past and Our Food Future, detailing how Monsanto came to have such an enormous impact on our food system. Sign up for The Fifth Draft to hear how the world's best storytellers find ideas that change the world.
Your Fellowship project, Seed Money, tells the history of Monsanto, from making the insecticide DDT to now manipulating DNA. Could you tell us why you chose to write this history?
I really stumbled upon this story. While researching my first book about the environmental history of Coca-Cola, I received permission from Monsanto to review the chemical company’s corporate records housed at Washington University in St. Louis. At the time, I was investigating the history of Monsanto’s caffeine contracts with Coca-Cola (Monsanto produced caffeine for Coke from broken and damaged tea leaves). It was just supposed to be a chapter’s worth of research, but I soon got hooked. I left that first trip to St. Louis knowing there was a bigger story in those archives. So I went back to unpack the history of Monsanto, a company now merged with the powerful German pharmaceutical firm Bayer, which is the largest genetically engineered seed seller in the world.
Just two years into this project, everything changed. In 2015, news broke about links between Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup and cancer. And this was just the beginning of the media frenzy that enveloped the company. Soon more lawsuits followed for other Monsanto herbicides and chemicals. Though none of these issues were front and center in my mind when I started the project, I knew I had to leave the archives and embark on a global journey to understand the history that was unfolding right before my eyes. Now, six years later, I’m excited to share with the public what I’ve found.
You mentioned your previous book, Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism, which incidentally also took on a huge corporation. What draws you to these subjects? What is the research process like and what challenges do you face reporting on such behemoths?
What do you hope policymakers and others in positions of authority take away from such a deeply reported history of Monsanto?
This book takes readers back to the origins of Monsanto in 1901 and shows how the company became reliant on fossil-fuel feedstocks to run its business. I call this strategy for making money “scavenger capitalism.” The firm was feeding off the remains of plants and animals long dead. By the 1970s, however, scavenger capitalism became a liability. At that time, roughly 80 percent of all the products Monsanto sold came from oil or natural gas, and when the energy crisis hit, the firm knew it had to find a new business strategy or it would begin to lose money. This is the often overlooked ecological reason why Monsanto decided to shift into the genetically engineered seed business. It was a strategic way out of a chemical commodity production industry that was becoming increasingly unprofitable due to changes in the oil and gas market. And the real takeaway here is that even as Monsanto tried to shake itself free from a chemical economy it helped create, it was never able to fully escape its past. Roundup was the first billion-dollar herbicide in history; it could not abandon this brand as it made the transition into genetic engineering. In the end, Monsanto focused its energy on developing GE technology that would help it sell old petrochemical products. This history should matter to policymakers engaged in our current energy transition, because as we think about moving toward a fossil-fuel-free economy, food production needs to be at the center of that conversation. Twenty-five years of agricultural data shows quite clearly that GE technology has not curbed our deep dependency on fossil remains buried deep in the ground. In fact, it has made us even more reliant on these finite resources.
How did you come to your role as environmental historian at the Ohio State University?
When I started graduate school I didn’t know the discipline of environmental history existed. Though the field dates back to the 1970s, when the modern environmental movement was taking off, scholarship in this concentration had not made it into my high school or undergraduate curriculum. But when I took a seminar on the subject in my second year of grad school, I was immediately hooked. I’d always been deeply committed to environmental causes, and I was intrigued by a field that promised to use the past to help develop solutions for the future. I remember when I was applying to grad school, one potential adviser mentioned that he thought I might have a “messianic complex” (at least that’s what I remember him saying). I felt his assessment was a bit much, but he was on to something. I was indeed passionate about writing histories that could be used by various stakeholders in our own time to better the world in which we live. I’m still driven by that conviction, precisely because the environmental challenges we face right now are so pressing. I’m not sure that drive will ever go away, especially now that I have two young boys, born during the writing of this book, who have to inherit whatever world we leave them.
What do you think genetically modified seeds will mean for our food future?
Twenty-five years ago, Monsanto executives promised that the firm’s Roundup Ready seeds, genetically engineered to be resistant to Monsanto’s blockbuster herbicide Roundup, would reduce farmers' need for a diverse array of herbicides. Unfortunately, this promise has not become a reality. It is true, that by the end of the 1990s and into the 2000s, farmers who adopted genetically engineered (GE) crops saw reductions in overall herbicide use in the United States, but around 2003, largely due to the emergence of Roundup-resistant weeds, farmers have had to turn to older chemicals to deal with weeds that are resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup. Though Monsanto told farmers in 1996 that GE seeds would allow Monsanto to sell “information, not more stuff” and that farmers could solely rely on Roundup to clean weeds from fields, the truth was GE crops did not sever farmers' reliance on old chemicals like dicamba, 2,4-D, and other herbicides produced from petrochemical feedstocks. Farmers are now being forced to turn back to old tools to try and fix problems Monsanto’s GE system helped create. In short, the food future currently being seeded by companies like Monsanto/Bayer looks a lot like our food past."
You May Also Like
As Bayer and Monsanto Push for Merger, Texas Farmers Fear Rising Prices (New America Weekly, 2015): Ahead of German pharmaceutical Bayer's merger with Monsanto, Matthew Choi writes about the fears of Texas farmers — that the merger would diminish competition and cause seed prices to spike dramatically in the state.
A Bone Left Unpicked (New America Weekly, 2015): In 2015, New York Times columnist and food politics expert Mark Bittman published an anthology of his columns from the Times. Leah Douglas reviews Mark's book, including his arguments about the dangers of our increasingly monopolistic and consolidated food industry.
Black Lives, Golden Arches (New America Weekly, 2020): In the 1960s, fast food companies such as McDonald's began to saturate the market in Black neighborhoods, using community engagement and identity-forward marketing to increase profits. Jerrod MacFarlane interviews Marcia Chatelain about her book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America and how McDonald's has played such a large role in Black America.
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Walnuts in Nangarhar
Zohra Saed
That time
in Aagam when father, a child then, picked
fresh walnuts with the mountain girls;
they showed him the fleshy green
skin over shell & nut he rubbed
on his lips & cheeks, giggling.
The girls circled around him, clapped
in unison & teased. In a hand mirror,
he saw himself stained pink,
a delicious trick that kept
its color a full week—
That time
so long ago, in the
season of walnuts.
Copyright © 2022 by Zohra Saed. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 10, 2022, by the Academy of American Poets.
“My father, at the age of five, went to Aagam on vacation. He grew up in Jalalabad. Walnuts and pine nuts grow in abundance in Afghanistan. He told me this memory to share how young girls learned to take the flesh of the walnut fruit to make a lipstick stain. I think of those trees on the mountains. I think of those young girls who were my father’s age then, grandmothers now.”
—Zohra Saed
