Studying foodways what foods people eat and how they produce, acquire, prepare, and consume them

m - is the best way to gain deep understanding of a culture. Pros: This can give insight into their daily lives and habits Illustrates what is important How they have adapted to their environments Cons: Music subject matter, style, instruments, genres Literature and art insight into the level of education in the culture Language etymology, for instance, can trace the roots of a culture and draw comparisons and links. History defines a culture, essentially. People interactions government, philosophy What is the best way of gaining a deep understanding of a culture? Some may argue that it is through the study of a cultures eating styles what they eat, how they prepare it, and how they consume it. Certainly, eating is a critical aspect to a persons daily life, and studying foodways can bring many insights into a cultures daily lifestyle and predominant habits, as well as illuminating ways that a culture has adapted to its environment. But food is hardly the full story; there are a plethora of other means to understanding a culture that can offer just as much or even more insight into a culture, like music, literature, art, language, history, and human interactions, just to name a few. Clearly, foodways is a useful but ultimately limited course of study the best way to gain a deep understanding of a culture is through integrating many different aspects of that culture. As a first example, take the ancient Greeks. What is most commonly known about them? For one, we remember their beautiful architecture. The Pantheon, although now mostly in ruins, still stands as a monument to Greek art and government. History teaches us that the Greeks were governed as a democracy, in which citizens were encouraged to freely give their opinions to the ruling councils. By virtue of governance alone we can deduce that ancient Greek culture was characterized by (largely) freedom of expression, which exerts a great influence on the culture as a whole. In addition, ancient Greek society, by modern day standards, was a very austere affair; people lived simple, frugal, unadorned lives. And of course, we remember the great Greek philosophers like Aristole, Socrates, and Plato, whose teachings about human interactions, life, and the cosmos live on today. Studying foodways could have illuminated the austere lifestyles characteristic of Greek society, but it could not have revealed the relative freedom of the people nor the manner in which they treated each other in public. Clearly, the best way to understand this particular society is to integrate its many different aspects, rather than focusing on just one. We can also examine modern American society, for this may be more salient to us. If we took studying foodways as the best way to understand American culture, we may conclude that Americans are largely overweight, overly indulgent in eating and spending, and often unconcerned with clean, healthy, and efficient styles of living. Surely, most Americans would argue against that interpretation. So if we then analyzed American music, we would find examples like the Beatles, whose music captivated millions of people and revolutionized the way music was written and performed, showing us that there are many Americans willing and wanting to spread their love of music to others. American history may be relatively short, but it nonetheless reveals how Americans have reacted to both positive and negative events as well as how mindful they are of the past while handling the present. The United States prides

itself upon being a democratic society since conception, and this pride is deeply reflected in American poetry, music, literature, advertisements, etc. Clearly, there is far more to American culture than what can be revealed by studying American food and eating habits. It is plainly obvious that studying foodways is not the best way to gaining a deep understanding of a culture. A culture is not defined by its food; rather, it is defined by its people and its history. Studying a wide range of a cultures characteristics and integrating the insights gained by all of them is the best way to truly understanding and appreciating a culture.

Climate change -> change in distribution of plants and animals -> disruption of food chain -> extinction Arrival of humans -> predation -> extinction Was the extinction of the blompus due to a sudden climate change or predation by humans? Scientists have ascertained that the extinction of this large carnivorous mammal coincided both with sudden climate change and arrival of the first humans. Upon close inspection, it is much more probable that climate change had a far more significant impact on the blompus population than human predation. It is known that the blompus was both extremely large and carnivorous. For this reason alone, it is unlikely that the first humans would have hunted this animal because of the inherent danger involved and by a lack of the required weaponry. Proponents of the human predation argument assume that the first humans were capable of taking down such a formidable animal, but there is little to support this assumption. The Bronze Age took place thousands of years following the arrival of the first humans, so in the time period that the blompus went extinct, humans would have hunted with wood and stone. Obviously, taking down a large mammal with wood and stone is extremely difficult. Proponents will argue that humans caused the extinction of the wooly mammoth with merely wood and stone, and although this example shows that the weaponry is at least capable of bringing down large animals, it neglects the fact that mammoths were not carnivorous. It did not hunt humans itself. However, the blompus was a carnivore. History shows us that humans, both thousands of years ago and today, tend to hunt plant-eating mammals like the mammoth, buffalo, deer, etc., rather than lions and wolves. There is no reason to assume that the blompus was any different and no evidence to back it either. So then we are left with the other explanation: climate change. Lets pause and consider the extinction of the dinosaurs millions of years ago. Many scientists accept dramatic climate change as the best reason for the death of the dinosaurs on Earth. Dinosaurs were also carnivores, and therefore they reside high on the food chain. If animals and plants much lower on the food chain are greatly disrupted, then the ones higher up experience the worst of the impact, for they rely on predation of lower animals. We can draw similarities between the dinosaurs and the blompus. Climate change would have fundamentally altered the landscape of the earth, bringing about new varieties of vegetation, living environments, and therefore necessitating great adaption on the part of organisms too. Evolution proceeds slowly. Organisms lower on the food chain have fewer dependencies on other organisms, so they are more likely to adapt quickly, but mammals lean on the presence of the lower organisms and thus they adapt more slowly. It is therefore likely that the blompus simply could not adapt quickly enough to suit its own environment, and deprived of its source of food, it went extinct. In comparing these two arguments, we find that arguing for human predation as the primary reason requires a few key assumptions that are unfounded and unsupported, namely that humans would have been willing to hunt a large, dangerous carnivore and were capable of doing so with the available tools at hand. However, the climate change argument is sound and can be backed with historical evidence from extinctions of other large mammalian carnivores. Therefore, it is more likely that the extinction of the blompus was due to large scale climate change, rather than human predation.