Friday 18 May 2007

Ancient Ethiopians drank Perrier

Herodotus heard of the Ethiopians "that most of them lived to be a hundred and twenty, and some even more, and that they ate boiled meat and drank milk." [The Histories, III.23].

Could it be that eating animal products does not doom us carnivores to an early demise, much though we deserve it? No; the real explanation was "...a spring, the water from which smelt like violets and caused a man's skin, when he washed in it, to glisten as if he had washed in oil. They said the water of this spring lacked density to such a degree that nothing would float in it, neither wood nor any lighter substance - everything sank to the bottom."

Sounds like benzene to me.

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