Lewis and Clark expedition left a trail of heavy-metal laxatives (2010)
offbeatoregon.com
offbeatoregon.com
This struck me as odd. "What? How did syphilis get to this part of the Americas already?"
Apparently syphilis was already in the Americas prior to European contact. Two schools of thought are that either Europeans already had syphilis but mistook the diverse symptoms for other diseases, or that Columbus and crew brought it back.
In a fairly objective accounting of historical science (is that a term?), I’d like to see more evidence when suggesting cultural behavior, or just leave the descriptive language out and let the reader interpret.
Maybe not: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/lewis-c...
And entries from the journal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_(explorer)#York_and_Nativ...
https://www.themeateater.com/conservation/anthropology/bar-r...
Though I do wonder how many "offered wives" were slaves of the tribe. We know that Sacagewea was a slave who was sold as a wife to a French trapper.
The fact that they spent nearly 3 years traveling in the wilderness so far from the civilization they knew / into a fair amount of unknown is fascinating to me. Something you can't really do anymore.
Their reliance on laxatives is fairly amusing / interesting. Granted, would maybe not include that in a movie...
The "little ice age" after ~1500 is suspected to have been caused by the pulse of reforestation, and thus dip in carbon dioxide, occasioned by the disappearance of the long-time stewards of open range land.
In the 14th century, a very large expedition west from Africa is documented, with likelihood part of it reached South America. (One ship was separated and returned, reporting fresh water out of sight of land, suggestive of Amazon outflow.) There is ecological evidence of pre-Columbian disruption in Amazonia thereafter.
Speak for yourself, this was Chris Farley's last movie:
People seem to do this sort of thing pretty often in the Arctic. There's a lot more empty space than some people think.
> People seem to do this sort of thing pretty often in the Arctic.
The arctic is a different beast. It is impossible to survive for long in the arctic without either a supply chain or substantial reserves, and expeditions can last for at most a season.
However, the United States has a lot more empty public land than people seem to realize. Even in the densely populated Northeast, you can walk into the White Mountains or Adirondacks without a map, leave the trail, and probably spend years exploring in a mostly self-sufficient manner. Especially if you commit to turning back whenever you encounter people or trails. And that's to say nothing of the west or the great deserts.
Just because a map exists and trails are cut doesn't mean you have to acknowledge their existence. Remember: Lewis and Clark, for the most part, were traversing already inhabited land.
We have Lewiston, ID and Clarkston, WA is just across the river. Tons of references to them around here too.
Also, The Mullan trail came through here...so we have a lot of stuff named after that expedition
As well as the French trappers and Jesuit priests...
I was just thinking that this area also seems to have a bunch of references to Lewis and Clark.
If you read the actual journals, two things stick out. First, the expedition was mostly boring. Second, the fact that the west was populated is difficult to miss. The expedition was almost more about establishing trade and diplomatic relations with existing civilizations than about discovering and charting virgin lands.
I wonder if one reason that L&C aren't studied more widely is that the happy version of the story is mostly boring ("we made a map and documented fauna") and the more complex/detailed/interesting version of the story makes abundantly clear the extraordinary scope of the Manifest Destiny genocide.
It's also true that civilized is used as a term of praise, and uncivilized is really only used as a term of disparagement, but these are connotations, and not ones I intend here.
Maybe "settlements" don't count as cities; the whole thing is a bit pedantic to me. But, in any case, "culture" is too weak a term for the complex social systems, political systems, and living patterns that existed during the time of L&C.
In a virtual kind of way, you can do this in Minecraft.
I play on a private server with a group of seasoned high tech types, and we have a tendency to explore very far from civilization (as it were). It’s a dangerous process fraught with peril, but if you can get back to civilization with the maps you make along the way, there is great benefit to the other players.
It is worth doing, but start small.
https://www.amazon.com/Undaunted-Courage-Meriwether-Jefferso...
So as Lewis and Clark’s men made their way across the continent and across Oregon, they were unknowingly depositing a trail of heavy metals along the way – a trail that historians and scientists have been able to detect and use to document almost their every movement, so to speak.Separately - my understanding is that there were many native groups worldwide that ate a meat-heavy diet, so when we hear about native Alaskans (for example) eating an almost exclusive meat diet, why weren't they having those same issues? Maybe fish / whale / seal vs. bison and deer is the problem?
They did eat plenty of local plants and likely would have starved without crops shared by local populations [1]. However, they were a large group with prodigious caloric requirements. The corps needed an epic amount of food -- roughly one buffalo worth of meat every 24 hours, likely in addition to foraging. (Buffalo, if you haven't seen any, are huge. Apparently the equivalent of 4 deer, or 9 lbs of meat per person.)
> Separately - my understanding is that there were many native groups worldwide that ate a meat-heavy diet, so when we hear about native Alaskans (for example) eating an almost exclusive meat diet, why weren't they having those same issues? Maybe fish / whale / seal vs. bison and deer is the problem?
Chronic dehydration likely caused by a combination of insufficient water intake, excessive exertion, and prolonged periods of high sodium diets (their emergency rations were, essentially, boullion and jerky).
In a healthy person, constipation is almost always ultimately an issue of under hydration. Fiber can help, because it pulls water in the digestive tract, but the best solution is staying well-hydrated. Hard to do when you're 30 men eating jerky and working so hard that the camp eats an entire buffalo each day.
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[1] https://www.pbs.org/food/the-history-kitchen/what-lewis-and-...
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/lewis-c....
https://www.memoriesoftheprairie.com/blog/2018/11/30/how-lax...
Funny, I've just played through Oregon trail game on a Nintendo DS, recognized many place names.
The one indisputable effect of a zero fiber diet is less frequent, smaller, and much "easier" bowel movements.
The idea that not having fiber in your diet leads to constipation can be completely disproven by anyone who is willing to try eating a zero-fiber diet for a few weeks.
The entire old-world primate order lost vitamin C synthesis, and that common ancestor was arboreal and a foot tall. Our genus has primarily subsisted on hunted meat for the entire period between adopting bipedalism and getting forced into growing crops (if you like this stuff, Against The Grain is a great read).
The root cause of constipation during an epic is almost always a prolonged period of mild to moderate dehydration. This can be caused by a lack of sufficient water, excessive exertion, excessive heat, excessive sodium intake, or most often all three in combination.
People often become very dehydrated on long epics even in places with limitless water, eg rivers or snow-covered mountains. This is especially true in colder weather. I have rendered aid to dehydrated parties on snow-covered backpacking routes much more often than eg on the side of walls or in deserts. In the latter situations you know that water is precious and your body wants to hydrate. In the cold the mind doesn't want to hydrate and water doesn't seem so precious.
Fiber always helps with constipation when your body is trying to preserve water because fiber pulls water into your digestive tract -- water which would otherwise be distributed in other ways by your body. If you are sufficiently hydrated then fiber often isn't necessary for healthy digestion.
Do you ever go weeks at a time on 4000 calories of beef bouillon and horse jerky, a gallon or less of water, and 8 hours of mild to heavy exertion? When you do eat fresh meat, do you eat 9 pounds of steak each day? If not, then your definition of "meat-heavy diet" isn't the same as the L&C definition of "meat-heavy diet".
If you ever find yourself in adverse conditions for prolonged periods -- in the alpine, high desert, or a big wall -- I highly recommend incorporating fiber into your rations. Particularly in the desert or on a wall, where staying hydrated is difficult because water is heavy.