Tag: botany

Marco Polo on Sago (Metroxylon sagu)

A. J. West , November 6th, 2015

There is no single authoritative edition or manuscript detailing Marco Polo's travels. The consensus is that the first editions of what became Le Devisement du Monde were…

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De’ Conti on the Durian

A. J. West , November 5th, 2015

Yesterday I said that Niccolo de' Conti was perhaps the first European to write about the durian (Durio sp.), a fruit native to the Malay Archipelago and…

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Some more zany anthropology stuff

A. J. West , April 16th, 2015

I've been trying to carry on the discussion over at Savage Minds on the post I highlighted the other day, but they don't like you commenting on…

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Spooky Nonsense on Domestication

A. J. West , April 13th, 2015

I subscribe to an anthropology blog called Savage Minds – you can find it in my sidebar, I've been reading it for years, and I quite like…

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‘Remarkable Plants’ by Bynum & Bynum, ‘The History of Central Asia’ by Baumer

A. J. West , November 25th, 2014

It was my birthday last week, so I've got some new books to read, including volume two of Christoph Baumer's The History of Central Asia (I B Tauris),…

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