The Fabulous Forager

Are you getting a good, solid eight hours of sleep every night? Sleeping soundly from the time you lay down to the time you get up to go to work? Well, stop doing that: it’s bad for you and unnatural. Yes, you heard me correctly!

There are so many aspects of our daily lives that we take for granted as being normal that have turned out to be totally maladaptive and, in the grand scheme of human history, brand-new: having hierarchy, eating cereal grains, wearing shoes… now it seems we can’t even get sleeping right.

Several months ago, the celebrity gossip blogosphere lit up over a mysterious new tattoo that Brad Pitt began sporting on his forearm. Originally, it was thought to be an outline of Lara Croft–Angelina Jolie’s Tomb Raider character–but a commenter at one blog noticed that it was actually an outline of Ötzi the iceman, Europe’s oldest natural mummy. Quite frankly, I don’t totally see the resemblance (apparently, the outstretched arm was mistaken for Croft’s braid), and to get a tattoo of a mummy because it reminds you of your girlfriend is… uh… kinda creepy. Not that that’s necessarily why he got the tattoo; no one really knows. Even his publicist admits she has “no idea.” Archaeology Magazine has already taken the liberty of coining the uni-name “Brötzi.”

The new issue of Archaeology Magazine has listed what its editors believe to be the Top 10 Discoveries of 2007. One story didn’t make the list but is a must-see: a Neolithic mural unearthed in Syria that could easily pass for modernist art.

Made up of red, black, and white geometric shapes painted 11,000 years ago, the small panel bore an uncanny resemblance to the early work of modernist masters Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee.

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This year Coqueugniot’s team not only gave us a more vivid glimpse into the ritual life of Djade al Mugahara, but a sense of just how close Neolithic aesthetic sensibilities were to those of early European modernists…

As you may have heard, the Oxford Dictionary’s official word of 2007 is locavore. In their words,

The past year saw the popularization of a trend in using locally grown ingredients, taking advantage of seasonally available foodstuffs that can be bought and prepared without the need for extra preservatives.

The “locavore” movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation.