Pomegranate in different culture

The pomegranate is native to the Himalayas in northern India to Iran but has been cultivated and naturalized since ancient times over the entire Mediterranean region.

Pomegranate fruit has been regarded as a miracle in different cultures and used as a multifunctional agent to treat and cure of the diseases throughout the human history.

In Greek mythology, it served as a symbol of the indissolubility of marriage; in Persian mythology, Isfandiyar ate a pomegranate and became invincible.

In ancient Rome, brides adorned their hair with small branches of the pomegranate as a symbol of richness and fertility. In Judaism, the number for pomegranate seeds in a single fruit are said to number 613, one for each of the Bible’s 413 commandments.

The Jews employ the fruit in their religious ceremonials; and it has entered into the heathen mythology - for in the isle of Euboea there was formerly a statue of Juno, holding in one hand a scepter and in the other a pomegranate

In Buddhism, the pomegranate is associated with fertility, abundance, posterity, numerous and virtuous offspring and a blessed future.

While, in Christianity and Bedouin tribes it is associated with fertility while in Islam the Koran describes a heavenly paradise that contains pomegranates.

In China the pomegranate is also an emblem of fertility and numerous progeny. Chinese women might offer a pomegranate to the goddess of mercy when they pray for children. Pomegranate in different culture

Economic bond among primates

In the family life-style of some primate is the creation of an ‘economic’ bond whereby males obtain food for females and their young.

As the attention of the mother is devoted to her young, she has less time to devote to obtaining food. Female primates, like all female mammals, nourish and carry developing young for many months before birth and also provide milk for the infant for months or years after birth.

Females need resources for themselves and their offspring, and makes can help acquire two of the main resources, food and safety.

For most primates, male contributions to female food supplies involve defending an area where food can be found. The females could spend less time searching for food and more time directly caring for and protecting her young.

The provisioning, bipedal male was able to obtain food farther away from the area occupied by the female and infant; thus, he increased their food supply without depleting local food resources.

But when male has exclusive sexual rights to a female (or group of females), this bond benefits both the female and the offspring because male provides food when necessary.
Economic bond among primates

Fermentation of milk

Milk can be consumed raw, or it can be transformed into a variety of other forms, such as butter, yogurt, kefir, cheese and other fermented milk products. In pastoral societies, milk is traditionally consumed mostly in the form of fermented milk.

The art of fermenting milk is widespread in Africa. Cattle and camels are important dairy animals, and milk fermentation product vary widely.

For example, jben and ayib are Moroccan and Ethiopian cheeses, nono is a Nigerian yoghurt-like product, and Zimbabwe and Sudan also have fermented milk products.

The milk is either home-consumed or sold in the immediate vicinity of the herd.

Across Central Asia, yak milk is churned into butter and added to hot, salty tea, which is consumed in vast quantities on a daily basis. Bovine milks may be mixed with blood and/or grain by some pastoralist before consumption

Yogurt has been consumed since recorded time. Perhaps it was discovered by Mesopotamians in about 5000 BC when herdsman carry the milk with them in pouches made from an animals’ stomach.

These stomachs contained a natural enzyme called chymosin, which forms gel or coagulum when added to milk.

Cultured dairy products history also reported that Genghis Khan loved the taste of cultured products and mandated that all of his soldiers consumed them on regular basis.

In Kenya various additives such as wood ash, animal blood, urine and sometimes leafy vegetables may be added to preserve fermented sour milk called maziwa lala.
Fermentation of milk

Anglo-Saxon farmers in England

By 750, the Anglo-Saxons occupied most of present-day England. The famed seven kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England – Kent, Sussex, Essex, Wessex, East Anglia and Northumbria - struggled for predominance throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, and from time to time a ruler of one of these kingdoms managed to establish hegemony over the other six.

Just as they had settled England in tribes, the Anglo-Saxon peasants tended to live in small villages.

Most of the people living in Anglo-Saxon England were farmers. They lived in individual farms or hamlets (small village) of between two and 10 farm units.

Each farm had a principal house made of thatch and wood in which the family loved and slept.

Their fields were quite different from the rectangular ones of the Celtic Iron Age, being laid out in long curving strips. In some kingdoms some land was farmed in common, in strips scattered over open fields. In others, such as Kent, land was organized in a more self-contained way.

The influence of Anglo-Saxon farming extended even beyond the Middle Ages: the ‘suite’ of crops and livestock that taken for granted toady was established at this time, even though the people no longer raise them in the same ways.

The association between the plough and cereal crops in England also goes back to the later Anglo-Saxon period.

The city such as York and London never contained more than a few thousand people, as most Anglo-Saxons preferred to live in the country as farmers. However, the farmers would build a king’s hall, a royal manor or tun, which survives in the place name Wilton, Walton and Kingston.

The farmers of later Anglo-Saxon England were members of a complex society, and were affected not only by demographic change but also by changes, in social organization. In particular, the burdens imposed on them by church, state, and local lords were increasing in the later Anglo-Saxon periods.

Norman conquests of England led by William the Conqueror in 1066 ended Anglo-Saxon and Danish rule of England, as the new Norman elite replaced virtually all of the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and church leaders.
Anglo-Saxon farmers in England

Food for Gods

Food plays a role as a commodity within a mutual transactional exchange between humans or between individual and god, a situation that manifests a connection between god, food and life in a cosmological triangle.

The abundance of food in Mesopotamia is evident in the records of what was presented to the gods and goddesses, who needed to eat four times a day.

Their main stay was bread, as it was for humans.

The main god, Anu and three main goddesses, Antu, Ishtar and Nayana, got thirty loaves a day.

The millers, bakers and butchers had to recite prayers of thanks to the gods and goddesses as they ground the grain, kneaded the bread, and slaughtered the animals.

Then the priest placed the food on golden platters and set it before the gods, perhaps on a table.

In Hinduism food plays an essential role in ancient sacrifice, religious speculation, devotional worship, and purity and pollution regulations.

Since the gods only accepted cooked food, the sacrificer is reminded of his inferior status by waiting to consume his portion on the scarifies animals.

In the most ancient scarifies herbs and plants were plucked up y the roots and burnt with their leaves and fruit before gods and this was considered a very acceptable.

By the law of Athenians were required to worship the gods with the fruits. Barley and afterwards wheat were offered in sacrifice to gods.

Sacrifice had its origin in meals, in the offering of food to the gods. This could and did at times become a matter of exchange, of offering food to god or to the gods in order to gain favor and benefit.

The offering also expresses thanks and praise for what had been received, whether the harvest of the fields, the blessing of a child, or the arriving at a new stage in life.
Food for Gods