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Reuters news agency reports that the charred remains of a flatbread baked about 14,500 years ago in a stone fireplace in northeastern Jordan have given researchers a surprise: People began making bread millenniums before they developed agriculture.
The discovery shows that hunter-gatherers in the Eastern Mediterranean achieved the cultural milestone of bread-making far earlier than previously known, more than 4,000 years before plant cultivation took root.
The flatbread, likely unleavened and somewhat resembling pita bread, was fashioned from wild cereals such as barley or oats, as well as from tubers from an aquatic relative of papyrus, all of which had been ground into flour.
It was made by a culture called the Natufians, who had begun to embrace a sedentary rather than nomadic lifestyle, and was found at a Black Desert archaeological site.
The discovery shows that hunter-gatherers in the Eastern Mediterranean achieved the cultural milestone of bread-making far earlier than previously known, more than 4,000 years before plant cultivation took root.
The flatbread, likely unleavened and somewhat resembling pita bread, was fashioned from wild cereals such as barley or oats, as well as from tubers from an aquatic relative of papyrus, all of which had been ground into flour.
It was made by a culture called the Natufians, who had begun to embrace a sedentary rather than nomadic lifestyle, and was found at a Black Desert archaeological site.
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Deepak Chopra, MD., has been saying, for years, that aging and getting old are just not the same. In terms of Yoga and Ahyurveda, he is on solid ground. Many yogis live into their 90s but think, speak, act and live as though they have bodies of 50 year old people. Here are some of Dr. Chopra's insights about aging from Brotherhood, a book he co-authored with his brother Dr. Sanjiv Chopra:
- "Although everyone ages, no dies of old age per say. It's not a disease. At the moment of death, more than 99 percent of a person's genes are intact."
- Dr. Chopra says that people "get old" because they believe it supposed to happen and quit directing their bodies into a healthy direction. "It's good for ninety-year-olds to go to the gym to keep their muscles from wasting away. This fact has always been true. What has kept ninety-year-olds from (the gym) is psychological: The whole thing was unthinkable, risky or just not done."
- "Reinventing the body comes down to inserting yourself as the body's leader, the force that issues orders based on life-supporting beliefs. "
- "Cherished beliefs need to roll into the gutter.. The belief that aging is a curse, that the individual has no control over it, that dementia and memory loss are a roll of the dice, that cancer is looming in your future and cannot be stopped - all these outworn beliefs...need to roll into the gutter once and for all."
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I've noticed, and been alarmed, by images of millennials (ages 25-34) consuming alcohol everywhere: by pools, at meals, sporting events and even yoga classes (alcohol should be off limits in any yoga setting). Now, research reveals their death rate from alcohol liver damage is higher than ever. Here's one news source:
Deaths from liver disease have increased sharply in recent years in the United States, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal. Cirrhosis-related deaths increased by 65 percent from 1999 to 2016, and deaths from liver cancer doubled, the study said. The rise in death rates was driven predominantly by alcohol-induced disease, the report said.Over the past decade, people ages 25 to 34 had the highest increase in cirrhosis deaths - an average of 10.5 percent per year - of the demographic groups examined, researchers reported.
The study suggests that a new generation of Americans is being afflicted "by alcohol misuse and its complications," said lead author Elliot Tapper, a liver specialist at the University of Michigan.
Deaths from liver disease have increased sharply in recent years in the United States, according to a study published in the British Medical Journal. Cirrhosis-related deaths increased by 65 percent from 1999 to 2016, and deaths from liver cancer doubled, the study said. The rise in death rates was driven predominantly by alcohol-induced disease, the report said.Over the past decade, people ages 25 to 34 had the highest increase in cirrhosis deaths - an average of 10.5 percent per year - of the demographic groups examined, researchers reported.
The study suggests that a new generation of Americans is being afflicted "by alcohol misuse and its complications," said lead author Elliot Tapper, a liver specialist at the University of Michigan.
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Faith means total surrender to what is, without a single shadow of ‘could be’, ‘should be’ or ‘would be’. Faith means total surrender. - Vasant Lad
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This from Ram Swarup writing in Hinduism Today magazine:
India's first major contact began when Vasco de Gama landed with gunboat and priests (1498). The newcomers were not only pirates and merchants but also believing Christians. They had the pope's mandate to convert heathens in the lands they conquered. They found that the natives had a flourishing religion of their own. They took to destroying their temples in earnest. Within decades of their occupation of small coastal parts, they had destroyed, according to their own records, 601 temples in 131 villages--all important Christian Orders taking part in this pious work. Franciscan friars destroyed 300 Hindu temples in Bardez, Jesuits 280 in Salsete.
St. Francis Xavier, who participated in this meritorious work, wrote back home: "As soon as I arrived in any heathen village, when all are baptized, I order all the temples of their false gods to be destroyed and all the idols to be broken to pieces. I can give you no idea of the joy I feel in seeing this done."
(www.hinduismtoday.com)
India's first major contact began when Vasco de Gama landed with gunboat and priests (1498). The newcomers were not only pirates and merchants but also believing Christians. They had the pope's mandate to convert heathens in the lands they conquered. They found that the natives had a flourishing religion of their own. They took to destroying their temples in earnest. Within decades of their occupation of small coastal parts, they had destroyed, according to their own records, 601 temples in 131 villages--all important Christian Orders taking part in this pious work. Franciscan friars destroyed 300 Hindu temples in Bardez, Jesuits 280 in Salsete.
St. Francis Xavier, who participated in this meritorious work, wrote back home: "As soon as I arrived in any heathen village, when all are baptized, I order all the temples of their false gods to be destroyed and all the idols to be broken to pieces. I can give you no idea of the joy I feel in seeing this done."
(www.hinduismtoday.com)
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No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. - Alan Watts
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Meditation is not about outcome. It is not about obtaining something. It is about the process. When people focus on the outcome, that is when they get stressed out when meditating. When you are focused on results and outcome, that is not Buddhist at all.
Meditation is not about reaching something. We meditate not to attain anything; we meditate to let go of things. These days I say that we meditate to lose things. So great meditators are great losers. When people look at me and say, “You had a great degree from a good university and now look at you, you are a loser,” I say, “Thank you, what a great compliment.” Being a loser is my goal in life and the biggest loser was the Buddha. He had nothing left, but emptiness and freedom. That is a loser. So instead of working hard trying to meet expectations, be a loser and get lost! - Ajahn Brahm
Meditation is not about reaching something. We meditate not to attain anything; we meditate to let go of things. These days I say that we meditate to lose things. So great meditators are great losers. When people look at me and say, “You had a great degree from a good university and now look at you, you are a loser,” I say, “Thank you, what a great compliment.” Being a loser is my goal in life and the biggest loser was the Buddha. He had nothing left, but emptiness and freedom. That is a loser. So instead of working hard trying to meet expectations, be a loser and get lost! - Ajahn Brahm
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Daily meditation unfolds inner peace, love and bliss, and a great happening happens. That happening is the balance between body, mind and consciousness. Meditation brings perfect health. - Vasant Lad
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Ron Echols is a "stringing driver," hauling pipe for fracking operations in West Virginia. He carries it all — 40, 60 and 80-foot pipe — while living out of a motel room in the mountains away from his Ohio home. The job can be stressful at times, even dangerous, but he has help to cope with day-to-day pressures: meditation.
"It sort of resets me," says Echols, who has been driving for 21 years, some of it over the road. "I find breathing meditation to be the simplest and most effective. I think there are benefits physically to it as well. If you concentrate on your breathing, you can't focus on anything else."
Echols doesn't know any other drivers who mediate, and he suggests that the majority of truckers think meditation is "wacky, kooky stuff." He adds that for the many drivers, meditation comes across as weakness or worse, for some, as an anti-Christian or Eastern-based religion in opposition to their own religious beliefs.
"Mediation is just sitting still. If you tell people to sit still for a few minutes and just breathe, that's something that your mother or your grandmother said to do; sit still and breathe. That's mediation, but they didn't call it meditation. If we can explain to drivers, 'Look, we just want you to sit for a few minutes and breathe; clear your mind,' that's what the old folks used to say. That's what I like to do: clear my mind, turn everything off for a few minutes."
(source: www.fleetowner.com)
"It sort of resets me," says Echols, who has been driving for 21 years, some of it over the road. "I find breathing meditation to be the simplest and most effective. I think there are benefits physically to it as well. If you concentrate on your breathing, you can't focus on anything else."
Echols doesn't know any other drivers who mediate, and he suggests that the majority of truckers think meditation is "wacky, kooky stuff." He adds that for the many drivers, meditation comes across as weakness or worse, for some, as an anti-Christian or Eastern-based religion in opposition to their own religious beliefs.
"Mediation is just sitting still. If you tell people to sit still for a few minutes and just breathe, that's something that your mother or your grandmother said to do; sit still and breathe. That's mediation, but they didn't call it meditation. If we can explain to drivers, 'Look, we just want you to sit for a few minutes and breathe; clear your mind,' that's what the old folks used to say. That's what I like to do: clear my mind, turn everything off for a few minutes."
(source: www.fleetowner.com)
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Our mind should be free from traces of the past, just like the flowers of spring. -Shunryu Suzuki