Archaeological advances

One of the things I find so interesting about the research into the distant past is how many more things are discovered, seemingly every year. One would think that after decades of excavation, everything would have been discovered already. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Recently a labyrinth was discovered on Crete on the top of a hill. Crete has undergone many excavations but clearly there is still plenty more to find.

And, as science moves on, we have better tools. archeogenetics is a new and burgeoning field. The discoveries made through testing DNA have upset many long held beliefs. The Etruscans, for example, believed to have emigrated from Anatolia to Italy are now found to be from the Caucasus.

Tests of the Blackfeet Indian Tribe have been similarly surprising.

Previously, they were thought to have migrated to the High Plains from the Great Lakes. Some anthropologists have argued that the Tribe’s language if part of the Algonquin family. Nothing in the Blackfoot oral tradition supports this.

DNA supports their belief that they have lived on their ancestral lands since time immortal. Current linguistic research indicates that the Blackfoot language has features belonging to an ancient language that predates Algonquin. 

Even coffee has proven to have a surprising journey. The coffee bushes evolved in Eastern Africa in a few different strains that eventually interbred. The plants that grew on the eastern side of the Great Rift Valley remained wild but the ones on the eastern side were brought to the Yemen city of Mocha. Folklore says that the red berries were eaten. (Yuck.) Oral histories say that an Indian monk brought the berries to India from which it spread around the world. Dutch explorers cultivated c. arabica on Java – Typical. Another variant was cultivated by French colonists – Bourbon – and that combination of those two varieties largely gave rise to the coffee most of us drink today. Who knew?

Coffee

While on our vacation to Costa Rica, we went to a coffee plantation. As anyone who has read my books knows, Rees is a big coffee drinker. Then coffee was even more of a luxury good.

Coffee us reputed to have been discovered by a shepherd who noticed his sheep and goats were more energetic once they ate these beans. From Africa, coffee went to the Arabs who discovered roasting and made a drink from them. They went to Italy and France, to the rest of Europe, and then to Central America in the 1700s. In Costa Rica coffee is known as the gold grain because it became such a huge part of their economy.

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Two seedlings are planted per hole to maximize yield.

flowers

Pretty white flowers bloom on the bushes before the berries form.

Picking coffee has to be done by hand since a coffee bush will have both green and red berries on it. A basket is attached to the picker’s waist and they walk around picking.

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The the coffee has to be dried and roasted before blending into the drink most of us have every morning.

Californa – visit

California visit

While at Bouchercon, my husband and I took a quick trip to Los Angeles.  I like this city and not just the weather. For one thing, Los Angeles is the home of many world class museums. On this trip, we visited LACMA – the Los Angeles Couny Museum of Art. They had a special exhibit on the armor of the samurai. It was beautiful as well as functional. I especially enjoyed the art deco textiles. As a weaver, I was astonished by the complexity, as well as the beauty, of these pieces.

lacma lights

A display of all the lights used in LA grace the front walk before the gates.

Because it is LA, of course, there are unique LA twists. Every place has food trucks. LA has unusual ones. Not a hot dog truck in the bunch but there is seafood, sushi and ethnic food of all varieties.

food truck

We stopped at the Nespresso store for coffee. It makes starbucks look like gas station coffee. All the staff wear black uniforms that look almost like martial arts outfits. Art work related to coffee adorn the walls and the front, where the coffee and food are served, looks like someone’s living room with sofas, little tables and comfortable chairs.  (The back half is where the capsules are actually sold. And expensive coffee it is too.) More than anything, this store reminded me of a temple set up for the worship of coffee. I love coffee and am a huge coffee drinker but to my New York eyes, this looked  over the top.