Category: Culture

That morning cup of coffee you had? It’s been around for about 600,000 years. Researchers traced the ancestry of the world’s favorite coffee, Coffea arabica, back to its origins using genetic data from coffee plants worldwide.

Their goal was pragmatic: understanding the plant’s genetic history to bolster its resilience against pests and climate shifts. They discovered that Coffea arabica emerged naturally around 600,000 years ago, the result of crossbreeding between two other coffee species.

Before humans intervened, these wild coffee plants grew in Ethiopia and were first cultivated for brewing in Yemen during the 1400s. Legend has it that in the 1600s, an Indian monk named Baba Budan smuggled seven coffee beans from Yemen, kickstarting coffee’s global journey.
Arabica coffee, known for its smooth taste, dominates the global market, accounting for 60% – 70% of coffee consumed worldwide. The remaining portion is robusta, a more bitter coffee derived from one of arabica’s parent species.

To uncover arabica’s genetic past, researchers analyzed the genomes of its parent species, Coffea canephora and Coffea eugenioides, along with over 30 arabica plants, including a sample from the 1700s provided by the Natural History Museum in London.

Their findings, published in Nature Genetics, shed light on arabica’s evolutionary journey. They discovered that the plant’s population fluctuated over millennia, adapting to environmental changes. However, these fluctuations left arabica vulnerable to diseases like coffee leaf rust.

By identifying genetic markers associated with resistance to coffee leaf rust, researchers hope to develop strategies to protect arabica coffee from future threats. Fabian Echeverria, an adviser for the Center for Coffee Research and Education at Texas A&M University, highlights the study’s importance in safeguarding the future of coffee production.

An ancient Greek dialect spoken by a dwindling population in remote Turkish mountain villages serves as a unique link to the past, according to researchers. This dialect, known as Romeyka, has characteristics more akin to the language of Homer than to modern Greek. However, with its speakers aging and no written form to preserve it, Romeyka faces the looming threat of extinction.

Quantifying the exact number of Romeyka speakers proves challenging due to its oral nature and the scattered communities around Trabzon. Recognizing the urgency, a University of Cambridge professor initiated the “Crowdsourcing Romeyka” project to document the language’s distinct linguistic traits before it disappears forever.

The project encourages native speakers worldwide to contribute recordings of themselves speaking Romeyka, with many anticipated contributors residing in the United States, Australia, and across Europe, forming a dispersed diaspora that still retains connections to their linguistic roots.

Research reveals that Romeyka traces its lineage not from modern Greek but from the Hellenistic form of Greek spoken centuries ago, sharing similarities with ancient Greek that have since vanished in other Greek varieties. This linguistic connection challenges the notion of modern Greek as an “isolate” language, suggesting a more complex linguistic evolution.

The online initiative aims to harness the power of technology to preserve Romeyka as a living language. Yet, the ultimate fate of Romeyka rests with its speakers, who must decide whether to pass it on to future generations.

A significant discovery occurred in central China: an ancient collection of literary records emerged from an old well. Dating back to 220 AD, these 10,000 bamboo slats, inscribed with Chinese characters, shed light on the governance of a nearby town during the Three Kingdoms Period.

These relics provide context for the creation of the renowned Chinese epic, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, narrating the tumultuous conflicts among the lords and soldiers of three states following the decline of the Qin Dynasty. Originating from the kingdom of Wu, indicated by references to the Jiahe era under the reign of King Sun Quan, these bamboo records offer insights into household registration, agriculture, mining, and economic activities in Dutou.

Bamboo slats, known as Jiandu, served as the primary writing medium for millennia before the advent of silk, rice paper, and wood paper. Recovering 300,000 Jiandu from various periods has added a wealth of ancient Chinese writing, still accessible and intelligible today.

The Dutou records meticulously detail taxation imposed by the central government and its allocation. Excavations around Dutou, conducted during road repairs, revealed over 300 infrastructure features, including roads, moats, tombs, houses, and workshops, adding layers to our understanding of ancient settlement patterns.

A joint US Navy and Coast Guard operation conducted on Tuesday successfully rescued three mariners who had been stranded on a remote Pacific Ocean islet for over a week. The trio had found themselves marooned on Pikelot Atoll, part of Micronesia, after their 20-foot skiff encountered rough swells and sustained damage to its outboard motor on March 31.

Unable to summon help via their radio due to depleted battery power, the stranded men resorted to a creative solution. They gathered palm fronds from the island and arranged them to form the word “HELP” on the beach, a distress signal that caught the attention of search teams.

During their ordeal, the men sustained themselves on coconut meat and utilized fresh water from a small well on the island.

The search for the missing mariners commenced on April 6 after a concerned relative reported their failure to return to Polowat Atoll, their initial departure point located over 100 miles away. Pikelot Atoll’s extreme remoteness posed a challenge to the search effort.

Benjamin Franklin, a pioneer of self-education, established the Junto, a Philadelphia-based discussion group for “mutual improvement” through intellectual debate in 1727.

Recognizing the need for a reliable source to verify facts due to the scarcity and high cost of books in colonial America, Franklin came up with a new idea. He envisioned a library funded by subscription fees. This vision materialized as the Library Company of Philadelphia in 1731, which made books accessible to those of modest means.

At first, members bought shares at a low cost that could be inherited by future generations. Prioritizing volumes in English for broader comprehension, the Library Company attracted eager interest. Eventually, the library opened its doors to non-shareholders for a nominal fee, setting a precedent that lead to over 40 lending libraries across the United States by 1800.

In the same period in Britain, philanthropists contributed books to libraries to enhance community learning, though these books remained within the library premises; typically, these institutions did not lend out their collections. To safeguard against theft, some libraries even secured books to the shelves with chains.

By 1771, on the brink of the Revolution, Franklin noted in his autobiography the pivotal role of lending libraries crediting them with elevating the intellect of Americans: “These libraries have improved the general conversation of the Americans” and “made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent as most gentlemen from other countries.”

During its tenure in Philadelphia, the Library Company acted as the first de facto Library of Congress until 1800. Today, the Library Company endures as an independent research library, open and free to the public, still sustained by shareholders. In addition to the circulating portion, it houses an extensive, non-circulating collection, including some of its earliest acquisitions like Franklin’s own copy of Logic, or, the Art of Thinking. While now focusing on American history up to 1900, the Library Company’s foundational mission of facilitating access to knowledge persists.