Life was comfortable, simple, and safe for Betty Lou's People. They had a rich social life—spending their days in close contact and working cooperatively together. No one was considered the leader. It was a very democratic group. They fairly shared food and other resources. Everyone had a role to play, and the life of the small band flowed quite peacefully from day to day.
The People's hunters were all men—the younger, stronger, and faster males. A party of three to five of them would embark on a hunt that could last for several days and cover a lot of territory. They would injure an animal (their weapons were not at all powerful) and then have to track it for days, until it finally fell and died. If they were successful, they'd return to camp with a bunch of meat which got equally divided among members of the clan.
The band's gatherers were mostly women, accompanied and assisted by a few older children. Betty Lou was a key member of the gathering group. She was a little healthier, stronger, and more curious than most of her cohorts. She and her team might be gone a couple days, seeking high calorie foods such as roots, nuts, tubers, and berries. Their contribution to the clan's diet was in some ways more crucial than the men's—who sometimes returned home empty handed. Betty Lou and her teammates often carried heavy loads on their return—as much as 70 pounds or more.
On their way out and upon returning from their foraging activities, the women would carry food that could be stored (such as roots and nuts) but eat nutritious food along the way that would otherwise quickly spoil. One day, on the way back to camp, Betty Lou spotted some juicy berries behind a little hillock. Knowing that they'd not keep, she quickly ate them for a boost of energy and continued on home. Upon arriving she relieved herself behind some bushes and then joined in the sharing process.
A couple of months later Betty Lou was headed for her favorite spot to defecate, when she spotted some new shoots growing from her previous deposits. Little did she know at the time that, after returning from her last foraging trip and eating berries along the way, she had pooped out the seeds which had now sprouted.
Being an inquisitive and observant type, Betty Lou looked more closely at the tender leaves and noted that they looked very similar to those of the berry bush from which she'd enjoyed a tasty snack. “Hmmm,” she thought, “I wonder what's happening here. Seems to be something important.” Being also a patient Person, she decided to keep a close eye on this little plant. Sure enough, in another few weeks berries began to form.
Betty Lou wasn't at all sure how this happened, but her curiosity was definitely piqued. She ran a few more simple “crappy” experiments over the next several months and began to realize she was onto something. Slowly she developed the understanding that berries could be cultivated and even came to understand that it was the hard little indigestible pits that caused the berries to grow.
As she grew older—she reached the ripe old age of 53—Betty Lou honed her skills at cultivating berries and a few other plants that the clan ate. She passed her knowledge on to other women and her clan prospered. Eventually the news spread to other clans: all their food did not have to be gathered from the wild and they did not have to rely on the fickle fortunes of nature to provide them food. Some of it could be grown by poking a hole in the ground and dropping in a seed. Human beings were on their way to an agricultural society. And the Africans and early Sumerians were grateful enough that they faithfully kept Betty Lou's story alive for a few millennia, until it could be written down.
[Note: Although I took some liberties with the “facts” on the Sumerian archeological finding, the account of how our hunter-gatherer forebears transitioned to cultivators is probably pretty accurate.]
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Betty Lou The First Berry Cultivator—Part 1
For several hundred thousands of years before Homo sapiens became farmers—in the form of the first Sumerian agriculturalists—our deep ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers. They lived in balance with their world. Like animals, they trod lightly on their Earth. They were few in number, took only what they needed, and left little or no trace of their presence.
When their ancestors—apelike hominids—came down out of the trees and began to live on the savannah, they had to learn to exist in the open, finding sustenance while avoiding the numerous predators that would stalk them. They succeeded in thriving in this risky environment, and found ways to cohabit with lions and leopards, as bipeds and quadrupeds learned how to grant the other necessary space to live, without major threat to either.
Our ancestors most likely began their carnivorous diet by finishing off kills left by the big cats or hyenas. Over time their hunting skills improved, as they began chasing down and killing the slower moving, large herbivores, as well as learning how to snatch small game. They supplemented this meat diet with a wide variety of plants—tubers, nuts, fruits, and other vegetables. In fact, vegetation was the major part of their diet.
Archeologists recently made an amazing discovery in a far-flung province of Turkey, at the site of an eight thousand year-old Sumerian settlement. They found primitive clay tablets that were inscribed with very ancient characters that predate a type of script used on later Sumerian tablets. It appears that the story told by the tablets is about how the Sumerians learned to develop agriculture—describing the pioneering work of a much earlier ancestor in Africa. It seems that earlier cultures, dating back as far as 12 millennia ago, had told and retold the story of how this horticultural trailblazer had come upon the method of planting seeds to grow edible vegetables. The actual identity of the first cultivator had been lost in the repeated telling of her story, so the archeologists named her Betty Lou. This is her story.
She lived something on the order of 15,000 years ago (as best could be determined from the tablet cuneiform inscriptions) on the African savannah. Betty Lou was a member of a band of hunter-gatherers, composed of an extended family of about 20 People. And “People” was what they called themselves. As far as they knew, they were pretty much the only living beings like them in the world, for their world was very small. They lived a semi-nomadic existence—settling for a few months around a water hole and then moving on when the water dried up or the local plants and game were no longer easily available.
Betty Lou's band might move four or five times a year—rotating around the region. On extremely rare occasions they would encounter a similar group of humans. They might exchange food or other items, or on even more rare occasions take mates, but those neighboring bands were so infrequently encountered that they did not even consider them to be People. As often as not, they'd fight them.
More on Betty Lou's discovery next time...
When their ancestors—apelike hominids—came down out of the trees and began to live on the savannah, they had to learn to exist in the open, finding sustenance while avoiding the numerous predators that would stalk them. They succeeded in thriving in this risky environment, and found ways to cohabit with lions and leopards, as bipeds and quadrupeds learned how to grant the other necessary space to live, without major threat to either.
Our ancestors most likely began their carnivorous diet by finishing off kills left by the big cats or hyenas. Over time their hunting skills improved, as they began chasing down and killing the slower moving, large herbivores, as well as learning how to snatch small game. They supplemented this meat diet with a wide variety of plants—tubers, nuts, fruits, and other vegetables. In fact, vegetation was the major part of their diet.
Archeologists recently made an amazing discovery in a far-flung province of Turkey, at the site of an eight thousand year-old Sumerian settlement. They found primitive clay tablets that were inscribed with very ancient characters that predate a type of script used on later Sumerian tablets. It appears that the story told by the tablets is about how the Sumerians learned to develop agriculture—describing the pioneering work of a much earlier ancestor in Africa. It seems that earlier cultures, dating back as far as 12 millennia ago, had told and retold the story of how this horticultural trailblazer had come upon the method of planting seeds to grow edible vegetables. The actual identity of the first cultivator had been lost in the repeated telling of her story, so the archeologists named her Betty Lou. This is her story.
She lived something on the order of 15,000 years ago (as best could be determined from the tablet cuneiform inscriptions) on the African savannah. Betty Lou was a member of a band of hunter-gatherers, composed of an extended family of about 20 People. And “People” was what they called themselves. As far as they knew, they were pretty much the only living beings like them in the world, for their world was very small. They lived a semi-nomadic existence—settling for a few months around a water hole and then moving on when the water dried up or the local plants and game were no longer easily available.
Betty Lou's band might move four or five times a year—rotating around the region. On extremely rare occasions they would encounter a similar group of humans. They might exchange food or other items, or on even more rare occasions take mates, but those neighboring bands were so infrequently encountered that they did not even consider them to be People. As often as not, they'd fight them.
More on Betty Lou's discovery next time...
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Tadpoles Galore—Part 2
I discovered the nature of the pairing a few days later. Once again I looked in the barrel, wondering how the resident king was doing. He was gone, along with the other one! As I peered down into the water, I spotted many little black spots, swimming around. My first reaction was, “Oh no!, the mosquito larva population had exploded.” (That's another story. We'd been fighting the battle of mosquitoes who had been using the barrels for depositing their eggs; later finding jillions of larva swimming around, about to hatch and fill the air with their buzzing, biting selves.) But no, mosquito larvae don't look like that. Peering closer, I saw that I was looking instead at jillions of wee pollywogs!
Well, maybe hundreds of them—swimming happily around. They were cute. But it hit me that their happiness might be short lived, as I wasn't at all sure that a plastic barrel made a decent home for tadpoles. This was not a pond in the woods that their dad had held dominion over and from which they could thrive and grow to maturity, but an artificial pond made of plastic.
What were they going to eat? And what would happen when I turned the sump pump on at the bottom of the barrels and began watering the garden? Would I be spraying out chewed-up pollywogs on our veggies? Yeeks! Furthermore, the barrels sat in the sun during the day and the water could get very hot. Would it cook the tadpoles? If not, when I pumped fresh water from the well, would it be so cold as to shock them to death? Suddenly I had a dilemma. The health and well being of hundreds of pollywogs was thrust into in my reluctant hands—just because I had plunked down three plastic barrels, in order to keep my garden from going into drought shock. Life gets complicated.
My first order of business was to try to do something that would prevent my adopted tadpoles from slowly starving to death. What kind of food would they need? I had a lot to learn. I decided that a good beginning would be to transfer as many of them as I could to a nearby pond—which already had a bunch of frogs in it, so the appropriate food must be available there.
I got a sieve from the kitchen and began tadpole dipping. I've never chased pollywogs around a barrel, trying to coax them into a sieve. It wasn't easy, as they seemed not to understand that I was a friendly being. They tried their best to avoid my scoop. But I eventually trapped several dozen, put them into a bucket, carried them to the pond, and dumped them in.
But then I had the troubling thought that resident pond frogs (not tree frogs, but bullfrogs) or other pond critters just might consider wee tadpoles as a great food treat. Was I taking my baby charges out of the barrel frying pan and casting them into the pond fire? I hunkered down by the edge of the pond and watched for a few minutes, to see if frogs or other pollywog predators came rushing in to begin dining on their new, tasty neighbors. Of course, they played it cool while I was watching, so I left, still wondering about the success of my emigration attempt.
I did a little research that night and discovered that tree frog tadpoles feed on bacteria and algae. My thought was that there was probably plenty of that in the barrels, as various flying bugs periodically fell into the barrels and began decomposing. So I decided to leave my remaining pollywogs in the barrels for a while, and see how they fared. I thought that if they were OK, it would be neat to watch my wee charges transform into frogs.
But then another troubling question posed itself: What might happen to dozens of tiny tree frogs later in the summer, as they began to enter the fall stage of their lives—when they were programmed by evolution to burrow down into the mud and hibernate? Surely, the blue plastic barrels would not be much of a domicile where they would want to set up house for the winter. There's no mud that they could burrow down into, and go into stasis until the spring came. I knew that what water remained in the barrels froze solid; they were definitely not a good substitute home.
The best I could do, over the next few weeks was to keep scooping as many of the growing tadpoles as I could out of the barrels and give them a ride to the pond in the woods. In the end I am sure that a bunch of the little guys never made it to maturity, but it was likely that a greater proportion of them survived, than if they'd simply been abandoned by mom and pop in a pond. Fish and frogs lay a huge number of eggs, so that a tiny minority will survive and carry on the species. These polywogs' parents never realized that, by choosing the plastic blue barrels, they were leaving the survival of their offspring in the novice hands of a bipedal mammal.
Well, maybe hundreds of them—swimming happily around. They were cute. But it hit me that their happiness might be short lived, as I wasn't at all sure that a plastic barrel made a decent home for tadpoles. This was not a pond in the woods that their dad had held dominion over and from which they could thrive and grow to maturity, but an artificial pond made of plastic.
What were they going to eat? And what would happen when I turned the sump pump on at the bottom of the barrels and began watering the garden? Would I be spraying out chewed-up pollywogs on our veggies? Yeeks! Furthermore, the barrels sat in the sun during the day and the water could get very hot. Would it cook the tadpoles? If not, when I pumped fresh water from the well, would it be so cold as to shock them to death? Suddenly I had a dilemma. The health and well being of hundreds of pollywogs was thrust into in my reluctant hands—just because I had plunked down three plastic barrels, in order to keep my garden from going into drought shock. Life gets complicated.
My first order of business was to try to do something that would prevent my adopted tadpoles from slowly starving to death. What kind of food would they need? I had a lot to learn. I decided that a good beginning would be to transfer as many of them as I could to a nearby pond—which already had a bunch of frogs in it, so the appropriate food must be available there.
I got a sieve from the kitchen and began tadpole dipping. I've never chased pollywogs around a barrel, trying to coax them into a sieve. It wasn't easy, as they seemed not to understand that I was a friendly being. They tried their best to avoid my scoop. But I eventually trapped several dozen, put them into a bucket, carried them to the pond, and dumped them in.
But then I had the troubling thought that resident pond frogs (not tree frogs, but bullfrogs) or other pond critters just might consider wee tadpoles as a great food treat. Was I taking my baby charges out of the barrel frying pan and casting them into the pond fire? I hunkered down by the edge of the pond and watched for a few minutes, to see if frogs or other pollywog predators came rushing in to begin dining on their new, tasty neighbors. Of course, they played it cool while I was watching, so I left, still wondering about the success of my emigration attempt.
I did a little research that night and discovered that tree frog tadpoles feed on bacteria and algae. My thought was that there was probably plenty of that in the barrels, as various flying bugs periodically fell into the barrels and began decomposing. So I decided to leave my remaining pollywogs in the barrels for a while, and see how they fared. I thought that if they were OK, it would be neat to watch my wee charges transform into frogs.
But then another troubling question posed itself: What might happen to dozens of tiny tree frogs later in the summer, as they began to enter the fall stage of their lives—when they were programmed by evolution to burrow down into the mud and hibernate? Surely, the blue plastic barrels would not be much of a domicile where they would want to set up house for the winter. There's no mud that they could burrow down into, and go into stasis until the spring came. I knew that what water remained in the barrels froze solid; they were definitely not a good substitute home.
The best I could do, over the next few weeks was to keep scooping as many of the growing tadpoles as I could out of the barrels and give them a ride to the pond in the woods. In the end I am sure that a bunch of the little guys never made it to maturity, but it was likely that a greater proportion of them survived, than if they'd simply been abandoned by mom and pop in a pond. Fish and frogs lay a huge number of eggs, so that a tiny minority will survive and carry on the species. These polywogs' parents never realized that, by choosing the plastic blue barrels, they were leaving the survival of their offspring in the novice hands of a bipedal mammal.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Tadpoles Galore—Part 1
We have a very cute critter around here—the tree frog. It's a "gray tree frog", to be exact. It took me many years to identify the source of a chattery, trilly sound that sometimes came from various locations in the woods around us. Was it a bird? An insect of some sort? After much speculation and some research, I finally concluded a few years ago that the call must be from the tree frog, although we had yet to see one. They are well camouflaged and very shy little critters. They are gray, warty like a toad, less than two inches long, and cling to warty-gray tree bark. You could be looking right at one and not even know it.
But patience won out and I finally was able to gaze upon one, a couple of years ago—although not on a tree. At the time we were watering our garden from three interconnected blue plastic barrels, into which we pumped water and then dispersed that water from the barrels via a sump pump onto thirsty veggies. One day I heard a strange call coming from the vicinity of the barrels—sort of a hollow, reverberating, tree frog-like trill. When I approached the barrels, however, the call stopped. I hadn't yet guessed that the strange-sounding critter might actually be in a barrel. How would any little noise maker like I was hearing climb up and into one of them?
Finally it dawned on me that the hollow sound was coming from one of the barrels. I walked over and lifted one lid, then another. In the third barrel I found myself eye to bug-eye with a wee tree frog. He blinked, I replaced the lid. At last I had seen a genuine tree frog!
It was funny to hear him call, as his sound had a distinctly different timbre from all other tree frogs who were calling from the nearby woods. (The male frog calls, trying to lure a female towards him—with his prowess as a singer. When she comes near, he mounts her and fertilizes the upwards of 2000 eggs she carries, which she then deposits in his private little pond. In this case, however, his chosen pond was a plastic water barrel, so these critters were entering uncharted mating territory.)
I speculated about what type of female might be attracted to his hollow, echoing call emanating from the bowels of a barrel. Would he be more successful than the typical woods singer, given the unique quality of his song, or would he be largely ignored and ridiculed by the local gal frogs? Maybe there just might be a female whose ear was specially bent towards his weird call—an echoey mate made in froggy heaven, just for him? All this was idle speculation on my part, since I would not likely be able to monitor the sexual success or failure of our barrel frog. I'm not sure but what it would be considered animal voyeurism, anyway.
Then one day a couple of weeks later, out of curiosity, I stopped by the barrel and peeked in, to see if our gray resident amphibian was still home. Lo and behold, I found two frogs perched inside the barrel's rim! Was this his mate (or about-to-be mate)? Was it even a female? They both stared at me, as if they really wished I'd disappear. So I did.
Or was it possibly a rival? Were they about to joust for the honor of being alpha barrel frog? I had done some reading, and found out that the dominant tree frog will inhabit a prime piece of froggy real estate, alongside his chosen pool. He then calls out, doing his best to lure females to his post. Subdominant male tree frogs will quietly hunker down nearby, posing no direct challenge to the alpha frog. They patiently wait, hoping that the king will sing so beautifully, that he calls in several females. Then, while he is otherwise occupied with his mounting, they will pose as desirable prospective papas, and see if they can get it on with the extra ladies who've shown up.
So I looked once again at the pair of frogs in the barrel (almost as funny as a barrel of monkeys), wondering just what I was looking at. Since I have no way of telling male from female (nor would I try, even if I did know—I'm not lifting the butt of a slimy frog and inspecting its genitals!), I could not know what roles these two froggies were playing out: mates or rivals. Wait and see.
More developments next time...
But patience won out and I finally was able to gaze upon one, a couple of years ago—although not on a tree. At the time we were watering our garden from three interconnected blue plastic barrels, into which we pumped water and then dispersed that water from the barrels via a sump pump onto thirsty veggies. One day I heard a strange call coming from the vicinity of the barrels—sort of a hollow, reverberating, tree frog-like trill. When I approached the barrels, however, the call stopped. I hadn't yet guessed that the strange-sounding critter might actually be in a barrel. How would any little noise maker like I was hearing climb up and into one of them?
Finally it dawned on me that the hollow sound was coming from one of the barrels. I walked over and lifted one lid, then another. In the third barrel I found myself eye to bug-eye with a wee tree frog. He blinked, I replaced the lid. At last I had seen a genuine tree frog!
It was funny to hear him call, as his sound had a distinctly different timbre from all other tree frogs who were calling from the nearby woods. (The male frog calls, trying to lure a female towards him—with his prowess as a singer. When she comes near, he mounts her and fertilizes the upwards of 2000 eggs she carries, which she then deposits in his private little pond. In this case, however, his chosen pond was a plastic water barrel, so these critters were entering uncharted mating territory.)
I speculated about what type of female might be attracted to his hollow, echoing call emanating from the bowels of a barrel. Would he be more successful than the typical woods singer, given the unique quality of his song, or would he be largely ignored and ridiculed by the local gal frogs? Maybe there just might be a female whose ear was specially bent towards his weird call—an echoey mate made in froggy heaven, just for him? All this was idle speculation on my part, since I would not likely be able to monitor the sexual success or failure of our barrel frog. I'm not sure but what it would be considered animal voyeurism, anyway.
Then one day a couple of weeks later, out of curiosity, I stopped by the barrel and peeked in, to see if our gray resident amphibian was still home. Lo and behold, I found two frogs perched inside the barrel's rim! Was this his mate (or about-to-be mate)? Was it even a female? They both stared at me, as if they really wished I'd disappear. So I did.
Or was it possibly a rival? Were they about to joust for the honor of being alpha barrel frog? I had done some reading, and found out that the dominant tree frog will inhabit a prime piece of froggy real estate, alongside his chosen pool. He then calls out, doing his best to lure females to his post. Subdominant male tree frogs will quietly hunker down nearby, posing no direct challenge to the alpha frog. They patiently wait, hoping that the king will sing so beautifully, that he calls in several females. Then, while he is otherwise occupied with his mounting, they will pose as desirable prospective papas, and see if they can get it on with the extra ladies who've shown up.
So I looked once again at the pair of frogs in the barrel (almost as funny as a barrel of monkeys), wondering just what I was looking at. Since I have no way of telling male from female (nor would I try, even if I did know—I'm not lifting the butt of a slimy frog and inspecting its genitals!), I could not know what roles these two froggies were playing out: mates or rivals. Wait and see.
More developments next time...
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