The dawn of bread
Archaeologists working at Shubayqa 1, a site in northeastern Jordan, found tiny fragments of an ancient unleavened bread as they were excavating a hearth. Th...
All posts tagged with nutrition
Link: Captive monkey microbiomes are more like humans
Ed Yong writes about an examination of the microbiomes of different monkey species in captivity versus wild populations: “Captivity Makes Monkey Microbiomes ...
Why do male bonobos have such low body fat?
I can’t be the only one surprised at how little body fat male bonobos have. A study of bonobo dissections by Adrienne Zihlman and Debra Bolter (2015) include...
Domestication, plant breeding, and micronutrients
An interesting essay in the New York Times today by Jo Robinson: “Breeding the Nutrition Out of Our Food”. The theme is that plant domestication selected for...
Mailbag: Thick skulls and diet
Re: <a href=http://johnhawks.net/node/15421”>”Hard headed science”</a>:
Lasting supper
This is a great story about “portion sizes” increasing over the centuries in “Last Supper” paintings, but I haven’t been able to get the paper yet.
Mailbag: Milk drinking
I read some older posts on your blog about dispersal of lactase persistance world wide. Is it not so that everyone can digest lactose at birth and that the p...
Papyrus and A. boisei
I’ve had on my stack for quite a long time, a short paper by Nicholas van der Merwe and colleagues, assessing the stable carbon isotope ratios in several spe...
UC-Berkeley genetic tests for freshmen
I’m not sure which tags to apply to this story. I’m torn between “colossally-bad-ideas” and “university-auditions-for-big-brother”.
Food guidelines
As long as I’m linking to the Daily Mail for their “Neanderthal metrosexuals” quip, I thought I’d pass along a story I liked – “Unlikely but brilliantly simp...
You are what your ancestors ate, part 1
Ann Gibbons has a long news article in the current Science reporting on an interdisciplinary conference on recent human diet evolution (“What’s for Dinner? R...