Yes, some of my facts are a little mixed up. *Something* important hasn't any wild relatives, I'm sure of it :)
> C4 dicots - ... Euphorbiaceae,
So I was likely right in remembering cassava as a C4.
> Interestingly, I've just been told today that mental retardation is a
common side effect of not processing
> your cassava well enough (not to mention cyanide poisoning). Oh, and of
course traditional
> malnutrition among females at all times, much less during pregnancy, is
also a factor. The one province
> in the Congo where my informant didn't note serious problems with memory
and basic smarts was the one
> where they eat maize as their staple starch.
All of it very likely. The cyanide in cassava needs to be removed by water or by breaking it up somehow (why a lot gets eaten as flour). This links nicely with rune.writer's idea about the preparing being important (I like that idea a lot). Cassava impacts on people's health when they are malnourished to begin with, yes, and eat a lot of it. It used to impact on my health when I'd spend a day looking at the leaves (thereby impregnating my fingers with cyanide) under a binocular and would then eventually give in and rub my eyes. Ouch. Bloody PhD's are a killer, no idea why Stu wants to repeat the dose. Nutter.
> > Civilizations based on non-grain carbohydrates -
> Ireland :) Also
> > non-Andean South America, never very highly
> developed though.
>
> If you mean that non-Andean populations were never highly developed, that
is not the case. There were
> very dense populations in the Amazon River valley, but these collapsed a
hundred years or so before Europeans
> made it that far, I believe. Disease that got to them before Europeans
did is cited as the cause for their
> collapse, but I've also heard soil degradation posited. Check:
>
http://rainforests.mongabay.com/external/amazon_cities_before_columbus.html
Another topic I'm not so hot on. Some of the stuff I've seen hasn't been all that convincing. Fairly large villages yes, big swathes kept clear yes, but...right...it's the same reports as in your link...I remember being here (in Brazil) when that news broke and not being so overly convinced. But I don't really mind much - the Tupi-Guarani built the best piles of shells in the world, of that I have no doubt. Rubbish tips they were, called "Sambaqui".
S
Powered by hypermail