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Hominy

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OYSTERS?
Had to be a bet between two paleolithic hunters around a fire near the sea. 'Cause tech changes, but people don't change much.
Or maybe we brought the knowledge up the evolutionary tree with us. Monkeys are well known to use tools....sharp pointed rocks...to break open oysters and clams to eat them. It's not required that we discard useful skills learned way early on just because we evolved to stand upright.

Spence
 
The process of boiling in ashes is called nixtamalization and has many benefits for the processing of corn. Hard to imagine how this was discovered in ancient times.
Not all nixtamalization was done with ashes. The history of it goes back as far as the history of maize, and the two came down through time together from the development of maize in Mesoamerica. Lime was primarily used to treat the corn. At such an early time that pottery stable enough to be put directly on the fire had not been developed, food was boiled by putting hot rocks into the pot with the food. Limestone was common, and if you boil limestone in water it dissolves calcium hydroxide from the stone, creating a strongly alkaline solution. That is what causes the nixtamalization, just like the lye from wood ashes. Part of the result was that the maize was softened, the outer hull removed, nutrition was much improved and the maize could be made into a dough, unlike plain ground corn.

Spence
 
Or maybe we brought the knowledge up the evolutionary tree with us. Monkeys are well known to use tools....sharp pointed rocks...to break open oysters and clams to eat them. It's not required that we discard useful skills learned way early on just because we evolved to stand upright.

Spence

It's not just limited to monkeys, many animals and birds eat clams, mussels, oysters etc..
 
Thumbing through this thread. And came across Loyalist Daves post. It brought a thought to mind. Hard to believe but at one time all of mankind was a bunch of teenagers. How did the human race survive?
Oh and I do like hominy!
 
Hard to believe but at one time all of mankind was a bunch of teenagers. How did the human race survive?
Oh and I do like hominy!

Some didn't, but, as a whole teenagers are pretty smart. Most are smarter than their parents were at the same point in their life.
 
Sadly, today, this has changed.
There are a few exceptions.
But for the most part, they spend more time interacting with their phones than other people, are generally boring and most are unable to have a conversation that doesn't deal with bad Rap music or Fortnight...
 
Prior to the 16th century no one in the known world knew what hominy was. let alone how to make it. Pellagra wasn't fully understood until well into the 20th century. That's over 400 years of learning.
 
...The process of boiling in ashes is called nixtamalization and has many benefits for the processing of corn. Hard to imagine how this was discovered in ancient times.

When maize was taken back to Europe, that knowledge wasn't taken with it. There were people gorging themselves on the "exotic" food, and suffering from extreme malnutrition, because they weren't absorbing any nutrition from it.
 
When maize was taken back to Europe, that knowledge wasn't taken with it. There were people gorging themselves on the "exotic" food, and suffering from extreme malnutrition, because they weren't absorbing any nutrition from it.

Outbreaks of Pellegra persisted all the way into the 20th century. From 1914 -1921 Spartanburg pellegra hospital was established in South Carolina where 1,306 reported pellagra deaths in South Carolina during the first ten months of 1915; 100,000 southerners were infected in 1916.
 
Sadly, today, this has changed.
What I was doing as a student-prank in middle school, seniors might come up with today. What we did as a prank as seniors, never occurs to these folks.

LD
I wish I were joking, but as it turns out, we're all getting dumber than previous generations. They don't say what the current decline in cognitive function has reached, but they tested people at the CO2 levels expected by the end of this century and found they were 21% dumber when breathing that atmosphere: https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-huge-reduction-in-intelligence-study-reveals
 
Or maybe we brought the knowledge up the evolutionary tree with us. Monkeys are well known to use tools....sharp pointed rocks...to break open oysters and clams to eat them. It's not required that we discard useful skills learned way early on just because we evolved to stand upright.

Spence
Thank god we didn't keep their skill of throwing poop. Just think what a debate in congress would look like if we did.
 
I wish I were joking, but as it turns out, we're all getting dumber than previous generations. They don't say what the current decline in cognitive function has reached, but they tested people at the CO2 levels expected by the end of this century and found they were 21% dumber when breathing that atmosphere: https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-huge-reduction-in-intelligence-study-reveals
I can assure you that it is happening without the effects of higher CO2 levels. I fear it is more due to laziness and lack of effort - it appears people just aren't interested in making an effort to learn any more. With all the knowledge of the world available on their phones, there isn't any concerted effort to "know things" and people just look stuff up. Unfortunately, since they haven't bothered to learn, they haven't the slightest idea whether it is true or correct and are incapable of critical thinking to evaluate the information. This is regularly seen with the growing anti-science/anti-intellectual movements within the population (USA especially) - ignorance is prized and education vilified.

Ignorance is curable, willful ignorance is immune to all cures....
 
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Not to change the subject but you mentioned putting a man on the moon and I've been watching some reporting on these privet rocket and space flight companies in the last few months and they have been saying that they are really close to having the technology to send a maned spacecraft through the radiation barrier into space. I thought, what? I thought we had done that already when we put a man on the moon, I know I saw it on TV when it happened. I guess there are some who say it was a cold war hoax. What the hell?
 
I can assure you that it is happening without the effects of higher CO2 levels. I fear it is more due to laziness and lack of effort - it appears people just aren't interested in making an effort to learn any more. With all the knowledge of the world available on their phones, there isn't any concerted effort to "know things" and people just look stuff up. Unfortunately, since they haven't bothered to learn, they haven't the slightest idea whether it is true or correct and are incapable of critical thinking to evaluate the information. This is regularly seen with the growing anti-science/anti-intellectual movements within the population (USA especially) - ignorance is prized and education vilified.

Ignorance is curable, willful ignorance is immune to all cures....

What? there are more college grads today than ever in U.S. history not to mention Post grads. Your not insinuating that the people we have in charge of institutions of higher education are dropping the ball are you? LOL
 
Not to change the subject but you mentioned putting a man on the moon and I've been watching some reporting on these privet rocket and space flight companies in the last few months and they have been saying that they are really close to having the technology to send a maned spacecraft through the radiation barrier into space. I thought, what? I thought we had done that already when we put a man on the moon, I know I saw it on TV when it happened. I guess there are some who say it was a cold war hoax. What the hell?
I think they're referring to the Van Allen belts, which are a product of Earth's magnetism. I'm not sure how far they extend into space, but it's entirely possible that the moon is within their influence. Mars, however, doesn't have them. That's one of the (many) reasons I think Elon Musk's supposed plan for a Mars colony is pure BS.
 
Not to change the subject but you mentioned putting a man on the moon and I've been watching some reporting on these privet rocket and space flight companies in the last few months and they have been saying that they are really close to having the technology to send a maned spacecraft through the radiation barrier into space. I thought, what? I thought we had done that already when we put a man on the moon, I know I saw it on TV when it happened. I guess there are some who say it was a cold war hoax. What the hell?
The earth is flat, the moon landing was faked and evolution is a lie....o_Oo_Oo_O

We went from a canvas & wood airplane in 1903 to a launching in man into space in 1961 and now I worry the next generation will need instructions for crossing the street, though they will need to be in pictures due to the poor reading & comprehension skills.
 
I think they're referring to the Van Allen belts, which are a product of Earth's magnetism. I'm not sure how far they extend into space, but it's entirely possible that the moon is within their influence. Mars, however, doesn't have them. That's one of the (many) reasons I think Elon Musk's supposed plan for a Mars colony is pure BS.

You're right, the Van Allen belt. I was under the impression though that the International space station is below the Van Allen belt as well as all of the shuttle flights.
 
William Bradford, speaking in 1630 of the founding of the Plymouth Bay Colony, said that "all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage".

When our country was founded there were naysayers.
When the automobile was invented there were naysayers.
When we split the atom, there were naysayers.
When we broke the sound barrier there were naysayers
When we put a man on the moon there were naysayers.

There have been and will always be naysayers, and they will always be wrong.
Since the beginning of time man has always progressed forward sometimes at a snails pace, but always forward.
 

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