Scientists Solve Mystery of World-Traveling Plant 52
sciencehabit writes "By land or by sea? That's the question scientists have been pondering for decades when it comes to the bottle gourd, a plant with a hard-skinned fruit that's used by cultures all over the world to make lightweight containers and other tools. Archaeologists know that people were using domesticated bottle gourds in the Americas as early as 10,000 years ago. But how did the plant make the jump from its original home in Africa to the New World with an ocean in the way? A new study overturns previous evidence pointing to a human-assisted land migration and concludes that the bottle gourd floated across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas on its own."
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That hasn't stopped RMS from cultivating toe jam and jelly not from a general store.
Bottle Gourds (Score:2)
...probably got here the same way the Indians did: From asia, land bridge or very short boat trip, carried as seeds or seedlings. The ocean wasn't in the way, or much in the way, at that point.
Remember, there are no "native americans." Africans. Every single one of us.
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Lets also recall we have FOUND evidence of Minoans( a settlement in New Hampshire), Romans( galley sunk off Fla), Celts( Ogam language written on rocks @ river forks) Vikings, Chinese( hand carved anchor stones along West coast from California to S. America) and others. I suppose one or more of them brought gourds.
Incomplete research perhaps? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Incomplete research perhaps? (Score:5, Funny)
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Irrelevant, there isn't enough fibrous husk on the bottle gourd for a swallow (or pair thereof) to grip on to.
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Are you suggesting that a tiny little swallow lofted a bottle gourd across an ocean? It would take a small flock of swallows harnessed to a gourd, and even then they could only sustain flight for an hour or so. And where would they have gotten a harness tens of thousands of ago? And why have no bottle gourd swallow harnesses been discovered in the fossil record??
Now pigeons. Pigeons could do it. At least for the smaller oceans. But that still doesn't explain WHY they should gather together and haul a
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Follow the gourd!
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Sandal, you heretic.
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They gave a bunch of crap and claimed to know the answer. Typical "science" lately, I guess.
They believe based on DNA that the gourds in the Americas are more similar to African gourds than Asian. That's something, but they can't explain the Asian gourds or origin. So I'm not sure how they can claim to know that the gourds traveled by Ocean, when we have humans that traveled further back than 10,000 years.
I guess if you assume that nobody could boat back then, they would be on to something. Vessels made
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Ten thousand years ago they were mostly rafts, rather than boats, but people were definitely using them on the open sea. Hell, 60,000 years ago they made it to Australia, well out of sight of land for most of the trip across a straight with very strong currents and foul weather. The question about the African bottle gourd is that the thing has been domesticated for so long that it can't reproduce reliably without help. The seeds never sprout because water never gets to them unless it is broken open. For
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60,000 years ago in the middle of the last glaciation (ice age) sea level was about 120 meters (400 feet) lower than it is today. The original Australians probably walked most of the way and may not have had crossings that got out of sight of land. After all humans got to the Americas by walking across the Bering land bridge.
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From what I've read the Australian continent never joined the rest of the continents since the breakup of Gonwandaland, which is the reason for the survival of the isolated marsupials. The introduction of placental mammals to Australia, first humans, later dogs, then finally rats, Englishmen and rabbits, is devastating the less biologically-efficient marsupials. Flores Island, in the southern reach of Indonesia, has never been joined to the mainland either, but hosted populations of dwarf rhino dwarf eleph
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Australia may have never been joined to Asia as you say but the reduced sea level would have considerably reduced the width of the straits they had to cross.
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I really can't imagine why you believe this. The fact that vikings reached the East coast of North America is widely known today and no one of substance has any issue with it.
What? I never claimed to have that belief, and if you go back and read again what I wrote you will see why I mentioned it. It's that people are taught something different from what we know to be true, or given a completely different perception based on not teaching specific things we know.
Cite someone that isn't a bonehead blogger or poaster in some forum
Well there spelling champ, go read public school curriculum. My complaint was not just that what people are taught is wrong or right, it's that people are taught bias to further someone's political agenda. Don't insert
Ancient (Score:4, Interesting)
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How long ago did the bottle gourd we know today evolve into its present form? Could it have made it to what would later become the Americas before Pangaea broke up?
Re:Obligatory (Score:4, Informative)
No, the bottle gourd exists in its present form because it has been domesticated for so long. It may well be the first domesticated plant, domesticated so long in fact that it only reproduces in the wild with great difficulty. The shell is so impervious to water that seeds don't get watered until the pod finally rots a year or more later, by which time the seeds are no longer viable.
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A domesticated plant (or animal for that matter) is one that has been grown purposely by humans for a long enough time that selective breeding has accentuated characteristics that make it more beneficial to humans.
Oblig (Score:3)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comic... [phdcomics.com]
By swallow (Score:1)
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Message in a Bottle Gourd (Score:5, Funny)
Walked out this morning. Don't believe what I saw. A hundred billion gourds washed up on the shore. Sending out their DNA.
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Tsunami (Score:5, Interesting)
Aliens (Score:2)
Its always the answer to the unanswerable.
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And it creates less controversy than "God did it."
Maybe a swallow did it... (Score:2)
For their next trick ... (Score:1)
... they'll explain why, other than south of the diagonal from New Jersey to east Texas, Oregon is the only place in the U.S. to find kudzu.
Not a new idea, probably not correct either. (Score:1)
This idea is not news - it has been around for a long time - and it is probably not correct either.
The problem: if the gourds floated across to the new world and washed up on a beach, the seeds could not grow in the sand. They need a richer substrate to grow and reproduce; beach sand will not do it. How they might have ended up in the kind of rich soil they need is still unexplained.
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Maybe some of them went up a river on the incoming tide and found some nice river silt to germinate in. Or maybe some happened to get washed far enough inland on a storm surge. There's lots of possibilities and lots of time for something uncommon to happen.
Anyone else think... (Score:2)
That this was about a factory? When I first read the title, I thought along the lines of "Travelling Salesman Problem" and that this was about moving the production efficiently close to the consumption. I was so upbeat and summarily crushed upon reading the first sentence. Article is still good, but wrong expectations. Its going to be one of those days....