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Neanderthals did not descale their teeth regularly, for which modern scientists can be very thankful. Embedded in the fossilized calculus, or tartar, on teeth from the Shanidar cave, in Iraqi Kurdistan, and elsewhere are some remarkable remains that are beginning to shed far more light on what Neanderthals ate. I don’t want to give too much away just yet. Let’s just say that if, like me, when you think of the Neanderthal diet you think of a bunch of cavemen and women sitting around chewing their way through a woolly mammoth, you’re in for a surprise.

My guide through the recent discoveries on Neanderthal diet is John Speth, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan.

Amanda Henry’s research clearly points to moist-cooked starch grains in the mouths of Neanderthals (but did they swallow?). Archaeologists, however, have found almost no evidence of Neanderthals using the hot-rocks boil-in-a-bag method of modern people who lack fire-proof containers. And surprisingly, they didn’t know what John Speth discovered while watching TV in a motel room: that it is perfectly possible to boil water in a flimsy container over a direct fire. In the interests of time I had to cut his fascinating description of an experiment to make maple syrup by boiling the sap in a birch-bark tray over an open fire, which concluded that it was “both efficient and worthwhile”. So, now that they know it can be done, how long before they discover it was done?

There is evidence that Neanderthals ate moist-cooked starch. There is evidence that one can moist-cook without fire-proof containers and hot rocks. All we need now is evidence that Neanderthals used similar techniques, and the palaeo-dieters can add a nice mess of potage to their daily fare.

Notes

1. Microfossils in calculus demonstrate consumption of plants and cooked foods in Neanderthal diets (Shanidar III, Iraq; Spy I and II, Belgium). (A scientific paper.)
2. National Geographic’s early report on Amanda Henry’s discovery of plant remains on Neanderthal teeth and a more recent report from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.
3. More on Neanderthal diets at John Hawks’ weblog.
4. Here is a transcript.
5. Photograph of the Regourdou Neanderthal mandible used by permission of the photographer, Patrick Semal, and the Musée d’art et d’archéologie du Périgord.
6. Intro music by Dan-O at DanoSongs.com.
7. Final music played by Ljuben Dimkaroski on a replica of a Neanderthal bone flute found in a cave in western Slovenia.

   Huffduff it

Perhaps you saw an article in a recent BBC News magazine about how US craft beer is inspiring British brewers. The Americans say they’re not bound by tradition, with the clear implication that the Brits are. And yet it was insipid American beers — like making love in a canoe, we used to say — that triggered the rise of microbreweries and craft beers. Now very hoppy beers with all kinds of flavours are big there, and increasingly big in the UK, and one result has been a resurgence of interest in British-bred hops. One of these, OZ97a, is being hailed as a new star of British brewing, not least by Mark Dredge, an award-winning beer writer. I read about OZ97a at Pencil and Spoon, Mark’s blog. Of course I had to talk to him.

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The thing about OZ97a is that it isn’t a new variety. It was bred in the late 1940s or early 1950s, but when brewers first got a whiff of it, in 1960, they rejected it out of hand. Way too tasty, with all that fruitiness. Not what beer-drinkers want. But with the rise of intensely flavourful US beers, by 2012 OZ97a was ripe for a renaissance, and a couple of test batches confirmed it as a great hop. So how had it survived? In a field genebank, run by the British Hop Association.

It is quite common to hear that genebanks should be maintained as a source of breeding material to adapt to changing conditions. But this is the first time I’ve heard of the changing tastes of consumers being the conditions that need adapting to.

Notes

1. Mark Dredge’s book Craft Beer World will be available at the end of April 2013.
2. The Food Programme has reported on hops and on the rise of US craft beers
3. Another genebank beer in the news is about to be launched. It was brewed from Chevalier, a century-old barley in the John Innes Centre’s genebank, re-evaluated because it is resistant to Fusarium wilt.
4. Photo of a hop flower by Ronald Bunnik.
5. Music by Dan-O at DanoSongs.com.

Engage

The world of fine chocolate has seen some major change in the past few years, much of it focused on the rise of so-called “bean to bar” chocolate made by smallish producers with an eye on the distinctive qualities of different cacao beans. One company that’s been making a name for itself is Original Beans, which markets a package that tells “The story of cacao in four bars” that recently won a silver medal for packaging at the Academy of Chocolate awards in London. Last summer, I was lucky enough to sit down with Sudi Pigott, a consultant to Original Beans, and taste a couple of them.

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I came away from the interview with half a bar of one we didn’t taste, the Piura Porcelana. Typing the ID code into the Original Beans website took me lickety split to a page all about that chocolate. It’s an intriguing story, the Porcelana variety being characterised by beans that are a lot lighter in colour than most cacao. Porcelana, of which there are said to be 33 genetically different types, was apparently rediscovered by Original Beans in 2007, since when the company has been working with local farmers and NGOs to boost production. But there are some niggles too. It’s strange, for example, to be told:

The Piura Porcelana’s origin is located on the foothills of a mountain range reaching above 2000 meters, called the Sierra Piura. The area is part of the xxx biodiversity hotspot, with bears etc. . Much of the original forest has been cut down over the past decades, resulting in changing weather and water supply. Now it is being replanted and restored.

xxx biodiversity hotspot? Bears etc? Is somebody still doing fact-checking and research for the copy?

Original Beans is good chocolate, no doubt about that, although there’s also been a bit of a to-do in the rarefied world of chocosnobs about who exactly makes Original Beans’ chocolate. The packaging says Made in Switzerland, although the company is headquartered in Amsterdam. CEO and founder Phillip Kauffmann is quite open about it being made by Felchlin, at least when asked, but that information is not widely available. Is that a problem? Not to me. There are people who make chocolate, and people who make things from chocolate, and they’re often not the same people. Apparently at the fine end of the “beans to bar” world that matters. Original Beans does everything except make the bars; I think that’s acceptable.

Is the price equally acceptable? I don’t know; what should good chocolate cost? Fair prices for farmers, men and women alike, no child labour, environmental sustainability, conservation, all that … what’s it worth?

I’m not the first to ask the question What Is The True Cost of Chocolate? of Original Beans, and the answers given then, in 2009, certainly have a lot of feelgood about them. In truth, though, I don’t think we’re any nearer an answer, and we won’t be until we have independent audits and much more transparency than most businesses could survive. There’s a real dilemma here. Original Beans and many other topnotch chocolate makers can charge what they do in large part because they are making smaller batches. They’re competing with one another, not with the industrial giants. Industrial chocolate really is a rather ghastly business in all sorts of ways, and yet I don’t see the vast majority of its customers switching to more ethical products, and if they did, I don’t see the ethics surviving the onslaught.

Notes

1. Original Beans’ local partner in Peru made a video about Piura Porcelana.
2. Here’s another video, of Original Beans’ Phillip Kauffmann talking about Cru Virunga.
3. Most of the world’s chocolate is now grown in Africa, away from the pests and diseases of its home in Latin America. Here’s a long article about its first home in Africa, São Tomé and Príncipe.
4. Oxfam has been running a campaign to persuade industrial chocolate to do better; it may be starting to bite.
5. Intro music by Dan-O at DanoSongs.com.
6. Final music by Cécile Kayirebwa. No idea which track; it just started playing when I reached her site, and for once I am glad for autoplay.

Engage