Free Republic

A Wakhi woman and her yak in Avgarch Village, one of the oldest settlements of Hunza Valley that’s only accessible by foot. Photo: Samantha Shea ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In a little-known mountainous area called Hunza Valley, located far north of Pakistan, people seem to defy all medical odds. It is primarily home to the Burusho and Wakhi people, who for centuries have survived and thrived in remote villages — with minimal amenities and rudimentary health facilities. Studies have found that the average life expectancy here is around 100 years. My husband was born and raised here, and is from the Burusho indigenous...

Apples originally evolved in the wild to entice ancient megafauna to disperse their seeds; more recently, humans began spreading the trees along the Silk Road with other familiar crops; dispersing the apple trees led to their domestication. Recent archaeological finds of ancient preserved apple seeds across Europe and West Asia combined with historical, paleontological, and recently published genetic data are presenting a fascinating new narrative for one of our most familiar fruits. In this study, Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History traces the history of the apple from its wild origins, noting that...

Studies of ancient preserved plant remains from a medieval archaeological site in the Pamir Mountains of Uzbekistan have shown that fruits, such as apples, peaches, apricots, and melons, were cultivated in the foothills of Inner Asia. The archaeobotanical study, conducted by Robert Spengler of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, is among the first systematic analyses of medieval agricultural crops in the heart of the ancient Silk Road. Spengler identified a rich assemblage of fruit and nut crops, showing that many of the crops we are all familiar with today were cultivated along the ancient trade...

Why do many food plants contain cyanide? In murder mysteries, the detective usually diagnoses cyanide poisoning by the scent of bitter almonds wafting from the corpse. The detective knows what many of us might find surprising — that the deadly poison cyanide is naturally present in bitter almonds and many other plants used as food, including apples, peaches, apricots, lima beans, barley, sorghum, flaxseed and bamboo shoots.There's a reason that cyanide exists in all these plants, and it is — to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes — evolutionary, suggests Kenneth M. Olsen, PhD, an assistant professor of biology in Arts &...