Janet Burns, Mental Floss: 7 Foods That Have Led to War
As authors Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett mused in Good Omens, "civilization is 24 hours and two meals away from barbarism.” Human history is indeed filled with moments of violence that broke out because groups of people found themselves running on empty. Some scholars even argue that human warfare itself may have evolved alongside our move from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle into an agricultural one, given that any growing population (even a prehistoric one) will likely strain its available resources sooner or later.
Whether the cause of conflict was threats to a nation’s entire grain supply or simply the loss of a lone pig, these foods all ended up in the same place throughout history: smack in the middle of war.
WNU Editor: Wars over spices and salt I know about .... even the one pig story/conflict on the U.S. - Canada border is a story that did read about a long time ago (when I was thinking of living in Vancouver) .... but pastries?!?!?! On a more serious note .... bread/rice price rises and shortages are the current food commodities that can bring instability and conflict in the world today.
4 comments:
WNU,
If you want to be enlightened or depressed, here is a reference
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4472322-dictionary-of-wars
Thank you for the heads-up Aizino on this book. One of my other side web projects is an on-line library .... I have many contacts and I just asked them if they have a free ebook copy hanging around. This ebook definitely looks interesting.
My friend has a farm with herds of black squirrels that kept getting into his attic. He strung a wire with a coke bottle, loose so it could spin, and peanut butter across a 45 gallon drum half full of water. Squirrels can't swim. He thought he'd get a couple of the squirrels. He got 10 to 12 every day for a month.
I'm told squirrel stew is good and squirrels are plentiful.
I have read that the rabbit hutch is what saved the English many times throughout history.
Bob .... you are so correct on rabbit. During the Ukraine famine my father's family survived on rabbits.
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