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Randall Stephens In a recent issue of Nature , Andrew Curry offers up the latest theories on milk and civilization in the West.  How and why did ancient herders supplement their diets with cheese roughly 6,800 to 7,400 years ago?  Who were these early cheese makers? What were the results of the new cheese diet and the later reliance on milk? Says Curry: farming started to replace hunting and gathering in the Middle East around 11,000 years ago, cattle herders learned how to reduce lactose in dairy products to tolerable levels by fermenting milk to make cheese or yogurt. Several thousand years later, a genetic mutation spread through Europe that gave people the ability to produce lactase — and drink milk — throughout their lives. That adaptation opened up a rich new source of nutrition that could have sustained communities when harvests failed. Curry also notes that: This two-step milk revolution may have been a prime factor in allowing bands of farmers and herders from the sou...

Joseph Stromberg, "Starving Settlers in Jamestown Colony Resorted to Cannibalism New archaeological evidence and forensic analysis reveals that a 14-year-old girl was cannibalized in desperation," Smithsonian , May 1, 2013 The harsh winter of 1609 in Virginia’s Jamestown Colony forced residents to do the unthinkable. A recent excavation at the historic site discovered the carcasses of dogs, cats and horses consumed during the season commonly called the “Starving Time.” But a few other newly discovered bones in particular, though, tell a far more gruesome story: the dismemberment and cannibalization of a 14-year-old English girl. >>> "Study reveals cannibalism in first US colony," AlJazeeraEnglish , May 1, 2013    raherrmann, "Digging Out My Cannibal Girl Hat," The Junto blog, May 2, 2013 . . . . So, funny story. When I first submitted my article on cannibalism and the Starving Time at Jamestown to the William and Mary Quarterly, the piece strong...

Randall Stephens In the coming week the April 2013 issue of Historically Speaking will be posted to the Project Muse site.  Subscribers can expect it soon in mailboxes.  The issue includes essays on environmental history, ancient religion, teaching, and Harry Truman. It also features interviews with Matthew Bowman on Mormonism in American history, John R. Gillis on seacoasts in history, and turning points of World War I with Ian F.W. Beckett.  In addition the April issue includes a lively forum on "Scientific Culture in the Modern Era" with intellectual historian Stephen Gaukroger (University of Sydney).  "One of the most distinctive features of Western culture since the 17th century is the gradual assimilation of all cognitive values to scientific ones," writes Gaukroger in his lead essay. "A particular image of the role and aims of scientific understanding is tied up in a very fundamental way with the self-image of Western modernity. One striking illu...