The Daytona Beach Bone Beds Fossil site

Most people vacationing in Daytona Beach want to see car racing, but if I went there, I’d rather go to the Museum of Arts and Sciences.  Specimens of a giant ground sloth (Eremotherium laurillardi) and a mastodon, both excavated from a nearby fossil site, are mounted there.  The fossiliferous layer where they originated exists 12 feet below ground near Reed Canal Park, and most of the fossils there are discovered by accident when construction crews bulldoze into the earth.  The almost complete skeleton of the giant ground sloth was discovered during 1975, and the mastodon was discovered more recently by James Zacharias, the former curator of the Museum of Arts and Sciences.

View from inside the Museum of Arts and Sciences at Daytona Beach, Florida.

This is the only mention I can find of the Daytona Beach Bone Beds in the scientific literature.  It’s about gompothere specimens found in Florida.  Gompotheres were a tropical elephant relative that expanded its range into Florida during the warmest of interglacial climate phases.  Page from the below referenced article.

Curiously, no scientific papers describe the site (as far as I can find), and there isn’t much about it in the scientific literature.  There are hundreds of fossil sites in Florida, and I suppose scientists think this is just another routine site in the state.  Perhaps, there just aren’t enough professional paleontologists to study all the sites in that state.  I found just 1 scientific paper that even mentions the Daytona Beach Bone Beds.  It’s an article in the middle of a really obscure journal.  The article describes the gompothere fossils found in Florida, and some of the specimens are from the Daytona Beach Bone Beds.  Gompotheres were a relative of elephants and had a similar appearance.  Unlike mastodons and mammoths, gompotheres did not have fur and were adapted to live in tropical climates.  They looked more like African and Asian elephants than mammoths and mastodons did, though mammoths were more closely related to present day elephants than either gompotheres or mastodons were.  Gompotheres expanded their range north during warm interglacials.  The presence of Eremotherium and gompothere, both tropical species, suggests the fossils were deposited at this site about 130,000 years ago during the Sangamonian Interglacial.  3 different kinds of elephant-like animals plus giant ground sloths inhabited the region during the same time.  How remarkable.  The site is thought to have formerly been a large river mouth similar to the present day St. John’s River.  One newspaper reports over 50 species of mammals have been excavated from the site.  From piecing together newspaper reports and information from the University of Florida Museum of Natural History database, I count 2 species of fish and 34 species of mammals.  Here is the list.  * denotes extinct species

Atlantic croaker

spotted seatrout

least shrew

Carolina shrew

eastern mole

red bat

*giant ground sloth (Eremotherium)

*Harlan’s ground sloth

*beautiful armadillo

*pampathere (a giant armadillo)

*glyptodont

*woodland vole (Microtus hibbardi)

Florida muskrat

cotton mouse

cotton rat

rice rat

woodrat

gopher

gray squirrel

southern flying squirrel

bog lemming

*capybara

cottontail rabbit

raccoon

bobcat

black bear

*Florida spectacled bear

bottlenose dolphin

*tapir

horse

*long-horned bison

*llama

white tailed deer

*gompothere

*mastodon

*mammoth

Reference:

Luoges, S; G. Morgan, J. Spielman, and D. Prothero

Neogene Mammals

New Mexico Museum of Natural History 44 2006

“Cuveronious (Mammalia: Proboscidea) from the Neogene of Florida”

 

Some Pleistocene caribou (Rangifer tarandus) Gorged on Seaweed

Seaweed is an healthy dietary supplement for ruminants (animals that chew their cud).  Sheep in Scotland, reindeer in Norway, and caribou living along the coast of Alaska eat seaweed that washes up on the shore.  However, seaweed is seldom more than 5% of their diet.  If a caribou or sheep eats too much seaweed, they ingest too much salt and suffer diarrhea. A diet of mostly seaweed is not optimal.

Scientists recently analyzed a 45,000 year old caribou antler found on Haida Gwaii Island located off the coast of British Columbia.  They determined through an analysis of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in the amino acids that seaweed made up between 23%-41% of this individual’s diet.  The authors of this study think weather conditions forced this caribou into a suboptimal diet.  Normally, caribou feed upon birch and willow twigs and leaves, sedges, and mushrooms during summer; and lichen and dried sedges during winter.  They are capable of removing snow cover with their hooves, but they have difficulty breaking through icy snow when it covers their feeding grounds.  Apparently, icy snow covered this caribou’s prime feeding grounds, and it had to subsist on kelp washed on shore.  This caribou did live during a cold stage of the Wisconsinian Ice Age.

Map of Haida Gwaii Island, location of the 45,000 year old caribou specimen analyzed by scientists.  During the Ice Age the island was larger.  The coast of British Columbia and Alaska served as a glacial refuge for western caribou because most of their present day range was under glacial ice.  Caribou also roamed as far south as South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama during the Ice Age.

Svalbard reindeer feeding upon washed up kelp.  Reindeer are the same species as caribou.

North American caribou

Kelp washing up on shore was an important item in the diet of at least 1 caribou 45,000 years ago.

Cladonia rangerfina–a lichen.  This is a common winter food for caribou over much of their range.  Lichen are a symbiotic organism–a fungus with algae and/or cyannobacteria living in it.

Caribou roamed far down the eastern seaboard during the Ice Age.  Caribou fossils have been found as far south as Charleston, South Carolina, and their bones are often dredged up in fishing nets off the coast of North Carolina.  Caribou bones have also been excavated from caves in north Alabama and north Georgia.  Caribou probably migrated seasonally in eastern North America, and the route of some herds likely included an area along the Atlantic Coast that is now ocean but was dry land during the Ice Age.  I wonder if eastern caribou some times ate seaweed as well.  There are specimens that scientists could study to answer this question.

I also wonder what else caribou ate when they lived farther south during the Ice Age.  Lichen is a present day favorite food, and there are 17,000 different species of lichen worldwide.  Lichens are symbiotic organisms consisting of a fungus with algae and/or cyannobacteria.  The fungus gets nutrients from the woody or rocky substrate but also gets nutrients from the photosynthesis of the algae or cyannobacteria.  Nevertheless, I don’t think lichen was an important food source for eastern Ice Age caribou.  There were probably better quality foods available in the richer woodlands and grasslands of the east.

Reference:

Kubiak, C; R. Mathewes, J. Grimes, G. Biesen, and M. Rochester

“Evidence of a Significant Marine Plant Diet in a Pleistocene Caribou from Haida Gwaii, British Columbia”

Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, and Palaeoecology 564 Feb 2021

We Live in a World of Whining Woke and Unwoke wimps

Stacy Abrams.  She is my hero.  Her voter registration drive delivered Georgia’s electoral votes to Joe Biden.  Sensible African-American women saved democracy in the U.S. for now.

African-American women saved democracy in the United States this past election, and at least delayed the Republican attempts to end the democratic vote for President by 4 years.  If it was up to white voters, an Adolf Hitler wannabe would still be President.  The majority of white voters still supported a corrupt racist rapist who after losing the election attempted the violent takeover of the U.S. government.  It was the overwhelming vote of sensible African-American women who put Joe Biden over the top, not the whining woke wimps who declined to support him because he voted for tough-on-crime legislation 30 years ago.  Woke wimps whine about how mass incarceration is racist, but this is ridiculous revisionist history.  I lived during the time period when this legislation was passed, and I worked in low income neighborhoods where the violent crime rate was high.  I was a route manager for a newspaper circulation department, and I had to deliver newspapers in neighborhoods the carriers were afraid to go into.  Gangbangers carrying Uzi machine guns hung around the corners, and they wanted to sell me crack when I delivered the papers.  Pregnant drug addicted prostitutes offered sex.  I often heard gunshots.  People who lived in these neighborhoods were scared.  So when gangbangers started serving long prison sentences, the violent crime rate went way down, and the people who lived in these neighborhoods were glad.  Now, on Twitter, the drug laws are considered racist.  No, they were not.  Suburban white cokeheads weren’t the ones firing machine guns into people’s homes during stupid turf wars.  Most people in those neighborhoods remember what it was really like, and they voted for Biden almost unanimously.

Woke wimps whining about “white privilege” didn’t win the 2020 election either.  There is nothing lamer than a white liberal (and I am a white liberal) whining about the evils of “white privilege.”  I acknowledge discrimination against black people and their unequal treatment under the law is still a serious problem, and of course alleged discrimination against white people is not even remotely comparable.  But use of the term “white privilege” is in itself offensively racist.  The term stokes resentment against a group of people because of their race.  This is the very definition of racism.  At best the term is unhelpful.  Try telling a poor white person in West Virginia they are privileged, and they will laugh you out of their house.

Woke wimps often whine about “toxic masculinity.”  Men are now considered poison.  Associating the word toxic with masculinity suggests there is something inherently wrong with being a man.  I took issue with the use of this term on Twitter, and a scientist insulted my intelligence by referring me to an online definition that stated “toxic masculinity” applied to men who abuse woman, not all men (like I didn’t know what woke wimps mean when they spout the stupid phrase).  She is wrong and the definition is nonsense.  There is nothing masculine about a man who abuses women.  Linking the word toxic to masculinity is an insult to all men because it implies there is something abusive in our nature.

She must have suffered a “microaggression” when I disagreed with the use of the phrase “toxic masculinity” because she blocked me on Twitter and stopped following my blog.  “Microaggression” is a word woke wimps use, if they experience a perceived slight and get their feelings hurt.  Woke wimps don’t like “boomers” (people born between 1946-1973) because we don’t buy their politically correct Twitter vernacular (in other words horse shit).  A “boomer” telling the truth to a “woke wimp” is guilty of a “microaggression.”  Hey, if the word micro is attached to a word, it means it is minor and not important.  Quit acting butthurt and get over it.

There are plenty of unwoke wimps who can’t endure “microaggressions” either.  Trumpanzees unfriend my wife and I on Facebook, if we dare criticize their demi-God.  Trumpanzees are so brainwashed they worship Trump and act like he is some kind of deity.  This cult of the brainwashed reminds me of the German people before and during World War II when “Heil Hitler” replaced the words “Hello” and “Goodbye.”  Now instead of free thought, all they can do is shout out “Fake News” and “Make America Great Again” and “Build that Wall.”  Trying to engage them in a rational conversation is like talking to a mud puddle.

Another group of whining unwoke wimps call themselves “incel,” meaning involuntary celibate.  Good grief!  These sexist assholes whine about how they can’t get laid, and they blame women.  I want to tell them they should try and improve their social skills.  When I was in my 20s I had a hard time getting laid–maybe because I was a short nerdy dude with low self-esteem–but I never joined a woman-hating club of losers.  I blamed myself and worked on my social skills and eventually did get laid.  Today, there is no reason to be a bitter woman-hating loser.  A man can have virtual sex with the most beautiful women in the world to their liking for $1 a minute.  (See http://www.manyvids.com ) It may not be as good as the real thing, but it is a nice substitute.  If virtual internet sex had existed when I was their age, I would have never gotten off the computer.  Some of these nice enterprising ladies even offer the girlfriend experience.  I’ve been married for 27 years, and I don’t need this–if I want the girlfriend experience I can get off the computer, go in the other room, and get in an argument with my wife–but some of these “incel” losers could use it.  Their social skills might improve, and they might really get laid.

Last week, I wrote about our evolutionary ancestor–Heidelberg man.  It’s hard not to see the contrast between Heidelberg man and modern day woke and unwoke wimps.  Heidelberg man was probably satisfied with a full belly of whatever roots or dead meat they could find, a little stone or wood shelter, and raggedy furs to wrap around themselves and keep warm.  Modern day wimps can have just about anything they want at the tips of their fingers when they go on the internet.  Instead of being happy, they go ape shit when a 20 year old video of a celebrity making a politically incorrect comment is discovered.  Brainwashed idiots, incapable of critical thinking, storm the capitol because the sore loser they voted for conned them into an insurrection.  Don’t let anybody tell you economics had anything to do with the insurrection.  These unpatriotic fascists were able to afford to take time off work and travel across the country and participate in an hysterical temper tantrum that will end up forcing many to serve long prison sentences.  They could have stayed at home, got drunk on wine ordered from the finest vineyards, consumed edible THC, ordered home-delivered pizza on a phone app, and had virtual sex with a woman who measured 40-30-40.  What would Heidelberg man do?

Middle Pleistocene Man (Homo heidelbergensis)

Many late Pleistocene animals evolved from middle Pleistocene ancestors that were different enough to be considered separate species.  Columbian mammoths (Mammuthus colombi) evolved from the southern mammoth (M. meridionalis), a shorter elephant with straighter tusks. Jefferson’s ground sloth (Megalonyx jeffersoni) evolved from Wheatley’s ground sloth (M. wheatleyi), and Smilodon fatalis evolved from the more lightly built S. gracilis, among many other examples.  The same is true for humans.  Both Homo sapiens and H. neanderthalis evolved from H. heidelbergensis, also known as Heidelberg man after discovery of the first specimen in Heidelberg, Germany during 1907.  Genetic evidence suggests modern humans diverged from Neanderthals between 750,000 years BP-550,000 years BP.  The population of Heidelberg man that lived in Europe evolved into H. neanderthalis, while the population of Heidelberg man that lived in Africa evolved into H. sapiens.  (The poorly known Denisovans diverged from Neanderthals.) Fossil evidence of Heidelberg man dates to between 600,000 years BP-300,000 years BP, though undoubtedly it occurred earlier than the fossil evidence indicates.  The oldest evidence of humans in Europe dates to 800,000 years ago and was found in Spain, but these specimens are considered an extinct sister species of Heidelberg man known as H. ancessor.

Artist’s depiction of Homo heidelbergensis.  They were about the same height as modern men and had the same average brain capacity, but their jaws were distinctly different.

The Schoningen spears, 330,000 year old projectile weapons used by Homo heidelbergensis.  They were found in a strip mine in Germany.  Archaeologists found 9 spears, 1 lance, a stick pointed on both ends, and a burned stick along with the remains of butchered horses next to a lakeshore.

Heidelberg man evolved from H. erectus.  Heidelberg man had a more human-like face and a larger brain capacity (averaging 1200 cc compared to 973 cc).  They had the same average brain size as modern day humans, and the main difference between the 2 is the shape of the jaw which was distinct.  Heidelberg man was the first species of human to colonize regions with cold climates.  To survive in harsher climates, they evolved to eat more meat.  In Europe this diet included elephant, rhino, bear, deer, boar, and horse; and in Africa they ate antelope and zebra.  They surely ate many different kinds of plants, but nothing is known of the vegetal part of their diet.  Heidelberg man had control of fire and used tools such as stone hand axes and wooden spears. In 1994 nine spears made of spruce wood were found in a German strip mine, and they dated to 330,000 years BP.  They are known as the Schoningen spears, and they were found associated with butchered horse bones.  Rapid rise of a lake level covered all this evidence in sediment and helped preserve it.

I have no doubt Heidelberg man could speak, though a minority of scientific opinion believes they could not.  The hyoid bone, important for speech, is well developed as are the middle ear bones used for understanding speech.  There is also evidence for right brain/left brain lateralization–one side of the brain is more dominant.  Brain lateralization suggests a brain used to speak and understand speech.  Heidelberg man hunted large mammals, an activity requiring cooperative hunting and therefore speech.

Specimens of Heidelberg man have been found in sites located in Germany, England, France, Greece, India, Zambia, Kenya, Ethiopia, and South Africa.  I tried to find out exactly how many specimens have been discovered worldwide, but as far as I can determine no study has catalogued them all.

Heidelberg man likely occurred in low population numbers, fluctuating with boom and bust climatic conditions, and whole tribes often perished  when important members died.  One site in Germany where Heidelberg remains were found also yielded bones of saber-tooths (Homotherium), lions, leopards, hyenas, bear, elephant, red deer, and horse.  Unlike modern humans, Heidelberg man didn’t always win in competition with the predators they shared the landscape with.

Reference:

Schoch, W.; G. Bigga, W. bohner, P. Richter, and T. Terberger

“New Insights on the Wooden Weapons from the Paleolithic Site of Schoningen”

Journal of Human Evolution 89 December 2015

Did Some Species of Giant Ground Sloths Live in Herds?

At least 22 giant ground sloths (Eremotherium laurillardi) perished in a pond polluted with their own feces over 18,000 years ago.  Scientists excavating this site found 667 vertebrate bones of which 575 were identified as belonging to Eremotherium.  These included the remains of at least 16 adults, 6 subadults, and 1 juvenile.  Fossil feces and gut contents were found alongside the bones.  The site, known as Tanque Loma, is located in Southwestern Ecuador.  Eremotherium was the largest of the extinct ground sloths, roughly the size of an African elephant, and they ranged from South America into southern North America, though they disappeared from the northern part of their range during the Last Glacial Maximum when the climate got too cold for them there.  Eremotherium bones show up in most coastal fossil sites in Georgia.  Fossil sites mostly composed of Eremotherium bones occur in Florida, Ecuador, Brazil, Mexico, and Uruguay; and the circumstances of these mass death sites may be the same.  Large groups of Eremotheriums, attracted to shrinking water holes during droughts, congregated there until they poisoned the water with great quantities of their feces.  The entire group then died within a few days, explaining the mass accumulation of mostly 1 species.  Modern hippos in Africa often suffer the same fate today.

Illustration of Eremotherium along with other Pleistocene animals.  Painting by the late Charles Knight.  Eremotherium may have been less hairy, like humans and elephants.  They were also larger than this illustration indicates.

Mass hippo deaths can occur when they contaminate the water they live in with their own feces.

Some scientists think the occurrence of different age groups at these mass death sites indicates Eremotherium lived in herds.  I doubt this can be determined.  It seems more likely they were simply attracted to the same resource.  Caves accumulate ground sloth remains as well because they were a resource that provided shelter for an animal that had difficulty controlling its body temperature.  Water holes and food items were resources that attracted ground sloths to the same spot, and many of the mothers just happened to be accompanied by young, but they were not necessarily living in organized herds.

Remains of other species found at Tanque Loma include Glossotherium (a smaller probably hairier species of ground sloth), pampathere (a giant armadillo), an extinct species of horse, and a deer related to the modern day whitetail.

Note to paleoecologists:  Nobody has yet studied the plant species composition of the sloth feces and gut contents found here.

Reference:

Lindsey, E.; et. al.

“A Monodominant Late-Pleistocene Megafauna Locality from Santa Elena, Ecuador: Insight on the Biology and Behavior of Giant Ground Sloths”

Paleogeography, Paleoclimatology, and Paleoecology 544 April 15, 2020

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338565424_A_monodominant_late-Pleistocene_megafauna_locality_from_Santa_Elena_Ecuador_Insight_on_the_biology_and_behavior_of_giant_ground_sloths

A Shocking New Study of Dire Wolf (Canis dirus) DNA

Dire wolves were one of the most common large predators of Late Pleistocene North America, and sub-fossils of this species are common, but scientists have had difficulty finding specimens with enough intact DNA to analyze.  There are thousands of dire wolf fossils excavated from the La Brea Tar Pits in California, but this DNA is contaminated with tar and can’t be used.  There are also many specimens of dire wolf fossils from Florida, but the humidity there causes DNA to deteriorate and become unusable.  However, Angela Perri, a zooarchaeologist from Durham University, made a concerted effort to find dire wolf specimens with enough viable DNA to study, and she found 5 specimens.  Labs from Australia and England analyzed the DNA from these specimens and came to a stunning conclusion–dire wolves were not closely related to gray wolves (Canis lupus) as most paleontologists had assumed, and they were not really even wolves.  Instead, they were the last in a lineage of now extinct ancient canids.

Pack-Hunting Cuban Boas (Chilabothrus angulifer)

Cuban boas work together when they hunt Jamaican fruit bats.  They each take a strategic position near cave entrances to increase the chances they will successfully ambush a bat.  Scientists believe the gauntlet they create requires active coordination.  Otherwise, they would all be laying on top of each other in the best strategic location, and bats could just avoid that area.

Cuban boas hunt in packs.  They coordinate their positions near cave entrances and ambush Jamaican fruit bats.  They kill their prey using constriction.

There are 12 species of large boas in the Chilabothrus genus, but each Caribbean Island usually hosts just 1 or at most 2 species.  Each island was colonized by 1 species of boa that drifted there on floating vegetation millions of years ago.  Once that species became established on the island, they precluded other species arriving on floating vegetation from colonizing the island.  Genetic evidence suggests Cuban boas diverged from their closest relative 17-20 million years ago, and since then they have prevented other boa species from establishing a population there.

Cuban boas were part of an unique ecosystem found on Caribbean Islands until it was disrupted by man thousands of years ago.  Cuban boas formerly grew up to 27 feet long, but now individuals larger than 9 feet long are rare.  During the Pleistocene they hunted hutias (large 15 pound rodents), birds, and lizards. They still hunt these species, but larger species of hutias became extinct after man colonized the islands.  Cuban boas may have also hunted the now extinct dwarf ground sloths that roamed the island then.  Cuban boas shared the environment with other predators including Cuban crocodiles, an extinct species of 3 foot tall flightless owl, and large extinct subspecies of barn owls and black hawks.  Since man arrived on Cuba, both boas and crocodiles have evolved to smaller sizes.

The 2 largest predators on Cuba have evolved to a smaller size, since man colonized the island.  Image from the below reference by Rodrigues-Cabrera.

References:

Dinets, Vladimir

“Coordinated Hunting in Cuban Boas”

Animal Behavior and Cognition 4 (1) Feb 2017

Rodrigues-Cabrera, T.; and T. Javier Torres

“An Overview of the Past, Present, and Future of the Cuban Boa, Chilabothrus angulifer, (Squamata: Boidae): A Top Terrestrial Predator on an Oceanic Island”

Reptiles and Amphibians Journal December 2016

A Study of My Seafood Consumption during 2020

90% of the seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported, and most of that is farm-raised.  This is a shocking statistic, considering how abundant fish were in American waters when Europeans first colonized the continent.  I was curious about my own seafood consumption, so I kept a tally of the fish and shellfish I ate in the year 2020.  I tried to avoid the Heisenberg Effect defined as the act of measurement altering the phenomenon under investigation, but I can’t rule out my subconscious influencing the results.  Nevertheless, I usually eat seafood once a week, and I believe this is a fair account of my average year’s seafood consumption.  The following paragraph is the result of my study.

I consumed seafood 76 times during 2020 or about 6.9% of my meals.  The tally is shrimp-13, tilapia-10, salmon-9, catfish-8, tuna-7, crab-4, croaker-3, sardines-3, oysters-3, trout-3, herring-2, crawfish-2, flounder-2, lobster-1, eel-1, Pacific cod-1, and unknown-1.

Pacific white-legged shrimp–small, medium, and large.  I like the largest ones because it takes less work to peel and clean them.  Along with tiger prawn shrimp these are the most common species found in the supermarket.  90% of shrimp consumed in the U.S. come from shrimp raised on farms in the Far East.

Shrimp is the most popular seafood consumed in the U.S. and 90% of it is imported.  It was my single most consumed seafood item as well.  Most of the shrimp consumed in the U.S. is raised on farms in Indonesia, Vietnam, and China.  30% of the world’s production is in Asia, and 54% is in Latin America.  Texas is where most shrimp are farmed in the U.S. The 2 most common species raised are the Pacific white-legged shrimp (Litopannaeus vannamei), and giant tiger prawns (Penneus monodon).  Some claim wild caught shrimp from the Gulf Coast are sweeter, but I think they taste like gasoline because of all the oil spills there.  It takes 3-6 months to raise a shrimp from egg to saleable adult, and shrimp farmers cut off the eye-stalks of the females to increase egg production.

Nile tilapia (O. niloticus).  This was the 2nd most common seafood item I consumed during 2020.

The species of tilapia (Oreochronis sp.) raised by farmers originated in Africa.  5 species of tilapia now live in southeastern North America where they have become an invasive species, but they can’t survive in waters below 50 degrees F and will probably not expand out of the region.  An adult can be raised from a fingerling in 6-7 months on a cereal diet, making them a clean fish to produce.  Indonesia, Egypt, Brazil, and the Phillippines lead world production.  I notice the ones I eat come from Ecuador.

Atlantic salmon came in 3rd.  All salmon sold in grocery stores (even those labeled as wild salmon) are farm-raised.

Norway, Chile, Scotland, and Canada are the leading world producers of salmon, and the vast majority are Atlantic salmon (Salmo samar). There is no such thing as wild caught salmon in grocery stores.  Fish labeled as “wild caught” are actually wild fish driven into pens and fed just like farm-raised salmon.  Trout sold in grocery stores are also farm-raised.

Channel catfish was my 4th most consumed seafood.  This is the only species I ate that mostly originated in the U.S.

In North America channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) are raised in the Mississippi Delta (including Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas) and California.  Still, the world produces 3 times more catfish than the U.S.  The American catfish lobby legally forced grocery stores into labeling Chinese-raised catfish as basa in order to reduce competition.  How silly?  A consumer purchasing basa is actually buying a species of the shark-finned catfish (Pangasiidae sp.).  1 acre of water can produce 300 pounds of catfish–a more efficient production of protein than any chicken farm or cattle ranch can match.

My consumption of wild caught fish is low, and so is the quantity and quality offered in the average supermarket, probably because the oceans are so overfished. The croaker I ate tasted like fish that had sat on a fish market counter for 3 days before they stuck it in a box and froze it. Tuna was the only significant component of wild caught fish in my tally, but scientists are experimenting with tuna farms.  In the future farm-raised tuna might be found in grocery store fish cases alongside farm-raised shrimp, tilapia, salmon, and catfish.

The Pleistocene Christmas Tree

I’m hosting family this week for Christmas, and I don’t have time to work on a new blog article. Here is a rerun.

GeorgiaBeforePeople

Christmas is a pagan holiday that probably originated during the Pleistocene.  Many of the pagan traditions associated with Christmas are rooted in northern European mythology, and they predate written records, so historians have no way of knowing for sure when they began. However, the celebration of the winter solstice was widespread throughout the ancient world, and people enjoyed this holiday thousands of years before the Judeo-Christian bible was ever written.  The wise men of the primitive world believed that the sun was a God.  This actually makes more sense than what the Abrahamic religions claim because life on earth does depend upon the sun.  The Abrahamic religions propose that a Supreme Being created the sun, but this belief leaves one to wonder who created the Supreme Being.  In a culture without scientific knowledge paganism seems just as logical if not more so than Judeo-Christianity.

The ancient thinkers noticed the days became shorter during…

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A Bowl of Red

The forerunner of modern chili has ancient origins, perhaps dating to the Pleistocene.  For thousands of years nomadic people dried meat into jerky to preserve it and often pounded it into power and stuffed it into animal skins, so they could easily carry it.  When it was time to eat, they reconstituted the powder in water and cooked it.  The stew would swell in size and provide a filling meal.  Some nomads added onion and garlic to make it taste better and to retard bacterial contamination.  Dried berries were also added for flavor and nutrition, and when freshly rendered fat was mixed with it, it became pemmican–an energy rich creation of Native-Americans.  Nomads traveling through southwestern North America discovered the small berries of wild pepper plants that grew throughout the region and started mixing them with their meat powders.  Eventually, some Native-Americans became sedentary and cultivated peppers, resulting in many different varieties that varied in flavor.  Present day Mexican cuisine includes hundreds of dishes that mix chilies with meat, but modern day chili, as people in the U.S. know it, is not a Mexican dish.  In fact a Mexican dictionary defines chili as, “a disgusting dish falsely claimed to be Mexican.”

The modern day version of chili probably originated in San Antonio, Texas shortly after the U.S. defeated Mexico in 1848.  American soldiers stationed at the Presidio, a fort located in San Antonio, ate food prepared by Mexican women who were paid to do their laundry.  The big iron cauldrons where they washed clothes doubled as cooking vessels for large portions of meat seasoned with chili peppers, onions, garlic, and cumin.  Tough cuts of meat from locally abundant longhorn cattle, small deer, and even wandering goats were stewed in the cauldrons until tender.  The cumin originated from Spanish settlers who came to Mexico from the Canary Islands.  The Mexican “chili queens” also sold tamales, tortillas, and beans to the soldiers.  De-commissioned soldiers graduated to become cowboys, and they brought the dish north on their cattle drives.  From the stockyards of Chicago the dish eventually spread through the Midwest, becoming a cheap depression-era favorite.  The cowboy cooks spit-roasted the finer cuts of beef, but used the poorer quality cuts and trimmings in their chili.  Canned tomatoes became readily available during the late 19th century, and cowboys didn’t really know what to do with it (some thought it was a dessert), but the cooks started adding it to their chili.  Beans were added to stretch out chili, if meat was scarce.  75% of Texans think tomatoes do not belong in chili, but I disagree.  I think chili without tomatoes tastes awful, but the acidity of the tomatoes brings out the flavor of the chili powder and elevates it to my favorite dish.  Some chili-heads think beans don’t belong in chili either, but I like beans in my chili.  However, I do think beans should not be cooked with the chili or the starch that cooks out will dilute the flavor.

Here is how I like to make my favorite dish after 38 years of practice.  The earliest chili recipes call for great quantities of suet, so the meat wouldn’t stick to the the bottom of the iron pot after hours of cooking.  This is unnecessary in modern kitchens.  I prefer my chili very lean.  Most original recipes also call for a slurry of corn flour and water to be mixed in for thickening.  Again this is unnecessary, if enough meat is used.

Brown 2 pounds of lean ground beef, bison, or venison in a dry pan under high heat.  I prefer a chunky chili grind or if I’m not feeling lazy, I will dice a sirloin tip or round steak into small pieces.  A regular grind is ok, however. After the meat is no longer pink season it with 4 tablespoons of pure New Mexican chili powder, 1 dried chipotle pepper cut in half, 2 teaspoons of cumin, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 chopped onion, 4 crushed cloves of garlic, 1 tablespoon of Mexican oregano, and 1 bay leaf.  Mix the spices with the meat while it continues to brown for about 5-10 minutes.  This toasts the spices and brings them to life.  Put the meat and spices into a pot and add a 28 ounce can of Hunt’s crushed tomatoes.  Stir and simmer for 2 hours.  Shortly before serving add a drained can of dark red kidney beans.  Stir and heat through.  Pinto beans, black beans, and even roasted peanuts can be substituted for kidney beans.

My chili the way I like to make it.  If you prefer it soupier, add beef broth.

Mexican oregano is in the verbena family but tastes like mint.  Mediterranean oregano is in the mint family but tastes nothing like mint.  If you can’t find Mexican oregano substitute mint, but don’t use Mediterranean oregano.  

Reference:

Bridges, Bill

The Great Chili Book

Lyons and Buford Publishing 1981