Exhausted Writer Discovers First Cave Painting of YeastFebruary 21, 2012, 11:55 am by Scientific American: HealthVery little is known about the beginning of the story of humans and yeast. Did it start in one place? Did it start in many? Did yeast independently colonize human settlements (and beer, wine, sake, bread and the rest)? Or was it one beginning that, with the spread of culture and humans, led to the rest? What is known is that with yeast, things changed. A single species of yeast, one out of thousands, ferments our beer, wine, bread, rum, and even a fairly long list of fermented foods and beverages of which you have never even heard. Because of this species, our cultures changed. Our diets changed. Agriculture arose or changed. Our bodies may even have changed. The yeast, throughout this change, has benefited far more than we have. There are more individual yeast organisms in wineries and breweries in France than there have been humans on Earth. It has been suggested that the differences among human populations in their response to alcohol is, in part, a function of the evolution of some but not all human populations in response to yeast and alcohol. Surprisingly little work has been done on the big questions in the story of yeast and humans. Although, yeast has been one of the best-studied laboratory organisms, the study of its history and tangled relationship with humans is nascent. For all of these reasons, when it came time to conclude this series, although I had said I would write about the story of yeast, I had second thoughts. I was not sure how to conclude. So little is known that the story felt like a skeleton. It needed meat, or at least malt. One can only say so many times that much remains to be learned. Instead of writing, I decided yesterday to go with my family to the Dordogne valley in France, not far from where we are now staying in Toulouse to explore. The trip, and some good French wine would, I thought, clear the mind.The Dordogne Valley is a long and flat plain, bordered on either side by limestone cliffs. The cliffs are large and yet it is not the size of the cliffs that presents a mystery to someone walking through the valley, it is the caves. Augured nearly everywhere into the limestone, they beg explanation. In some, great discoveries have been made. In others, it appears no one has yet really set foot. It is the others that add an air of real possibility to the whole scene. What has been found in these caves and what remains to be found offers as important a perspective on the history of early humans as there is to be had. [More]
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