The development of plant food processing in the Levant: insights from use-wear analysis of Early Epipalaeolithic ground stone tools.

In recent years, the study of percussive, pounding and grinding tools has provided new insights into human evolution, more particularly regarding the development of technology enabling the processing and exploitation of plant resources. Some of these studies focus on early evidence for flour production, an activity frequently perceived as an important step in the evolution of plant exploitation. The present paper investigates plant food preparation in mobile hunter-gatherer societies from the Southern Levant. The analysis consists of a use-wear study of 18 tools recovered from Ohalo II, a 23 000-year-old site in Israel showing an exceptional level of preservation. Our sample includes a slab previously interpreted as a lower implement used for producing flour, based on the presence of cereal starch residues. The use-wear data we have obtained provide crucial information about the function of this and other percussive tools at Ohalo II, as well as on investment in tool manufacture, discard strategies and evidence for plant processing in the Late Pleistocene. The use-wear analysis indicates that the production of flour was a sporadic activity at Ohalo II, predating by thousands of years the onset of routine processing of plant foods.

Experimental Barley Flour Production in 12,500-Year-Old Rock-Cut Mortars in Southwestern Asia.

Experimental archaeology at a Natufian site in the Southern Levant documents for the first time the use of 12,500-year-old rock-cut mortars for producing wild barley flour, some 2,000 to 3,000 years before cereal cultivation. Our reconstruction involved processing wild barley on the prehistoric threshing floor, followed by use of the conical mortars (a common feature in Natufian sites), thereby demonstrating the efficient peeling and milling of hulled grains. This discovery complements nearly 80 years of investigations suggesting that the Natufians regularly harvested almost-ripe wild cereals using sickles hafted with flint blades. Sickles had been replicated in the past and tested in the field for harvesting cereals, thusly obtaining the characteristic sheen along the edge of the hafted flint blades as found in Natufian remnants. Here we report that Natufian wide and narrow conical mortars enabled the processing of wild barley for making the groats and fine flour that provided considerable quantities of nourishment. Dishes in the Early Natufian (15,000-13,500 CalBP) were groat meals and porridge and subsequently, in the Late Natufian (13,500-11,700 CalBP), we suggest that unleavened bread made from fine flour was added. These food preparing techniques widened the dietary breadth of the sedentary Natufian hunter-gatherers, paving the way to the emergence of farming communities, the hallmark of the Neolithic Revolution.

Environmental factors in Tiny Tim's near-fatal illness.

Physicians, Dickens scholars, and historians have tried to diagnose the condition that affected Tiny Tim in A Christmas Carol. Leading entities include tuberculosis (TB), rickets, malnutrition, cerebral palsy, spinal dysraphism, and renal tubular acidosis. This article posits that an examination of the environment of London of 1820 to 1843 (when the novella was written) can provide important clues as to his condition. The blackened skies from burning coal, the crowding of people in tenements, the limited diet of the underclass, and the filth of London resulted in a haven for infectious diseases and rickets in children. Sixty percent of children in London had rickets, and nearly 50% had signs of TB. Tiny Tim likely had a combination of both diseases. After Ebenezer Scrooge's transformation, Scrooge could have ensured an improved diet, sunshine exposure, and possibly cod liver oil for Tiny Tim, which could have led to a "cure." Dickens was familiar with both rickets and TB and wrote about cod liver oil as a possible cure for rickets and scrofula. Improved vitamin D status can result in enhanced macrophage synthesis of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D, which increases the synthesis of the antimicrobial peptide cathelicidin (LL-37). This component of the innate immune system has strong killing properties for Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The combination of rickets and TB represent a crippling condition that could be reversed by improved vitamin D status.

Accounting for the contribution of vitamin B to Canada's WWII effort.

Canada began to fortify its flour and bread with vitamin B when it entered the Second World War. The decision was informed by the biology of vitamin B and therefore I suggest that the complexity of this political maneuver can best be understood by considering the specificity of the biochemistry of vitamin B. In this paper I will show that the specific biology of vitamin B allowed the Canadian government the possibility of a healthier population under wartime conditions but also allowed the government a variety of means by which to develop and organize food processing practices to this end.