[GSBN] a very new take on straw

[Bob Theis]

Decades ago I spent a wonderful afternoon with an English thatcher who described farms in eastern Europe where they grow the traditional forms of wheat that produce the best thatching straw. The grain, he said,  is a by-product. 

Bob

> On Dec 18, 2021, at 5:17 PM, Bruce EBNet <bruce at ecobuildnetwork.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Baleheads -
> 
> I’ve been reading and enjoying The Dawn of Everything (highly recommended!) which upends the mythic narratives we all grew up with about early humanity and the dawn of agriculture and civilization.
> 
> The passage quoted below jumped out at me bigly, hope you enjoy, too.
> 
> warm solstice greetings in grave times,
> 
> Bruce King
> (415) 987-7271
> Reducing emissions is essential
> Reversing emissions is even better:
> The New Carbon Architecture <https://www.ecobuildnetwork.org/projects/new-carbon-architecture>
> 
> NOTES FROM
> 
> The Dawn of Everything
> 
> David Graeber & David Wengrow
> 
> The revolution that never happened: how Neolithic peoples avoided agriculture
>  	Today we consider straw a by-product of cereal-farming, the primary purpose being to produce food. But archaeological evidence suggests things started the other way round. Human populations in the Middle East began settling in permanent villages long before cereals became a major component of their diets. In doing so, they found new uses for the stalks of wild grasses; these included fuel for lighting fires, and the temper that transformed mud and clay from so much friable matter into a vital tectonic resource, used to build houses, ovens, storage bins and other fixed structures. Straw could also be used to make baskets, clothing, matting and thatch.
> 
> Excerpt From
> 
> David Graeber & David Wengrow. “The Dawn of Everything.” Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Apple Books. 
> This material may be protected by copyright.
> 
> Available in Apple Books <https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-dawn-of-everything/id1548292642>
> 
> Sent from my pad thing
> -- 
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