Southpaw?

[AToE]

mmmm....excess beef

That's funny, that's actually kinda what my family used to do on our elk farm. We'd just raise the animals to be as well fed and happy as possible, then every spring when the males dropped off their old antlers (or stubs, see next bit) and grew new ones, we'd chop off the new antlers at just the right stage in their growth (as big as they're going to get, but still big rounded "clubs" on the ends rather than spikes). This is before the antler changed from it's velvet covered, fleshy/bloody bone phase into it's later "hard horn" phase.

Then those antlers (full of nice healthy blood) are frozen, dried, kilned and powdered into very potent medicine.

So there you go. The animal doesn't really need them since we take care of deciding who's going to mate with who, plus they're just going to kill eachother with the things anyways (and theirselves half the time... sometimes 2 elk will get their antlers permanently locked together and they just both die) - and we have a good use for them... so yeah, we'll take that please!

We get medicine, they get great food, excellent healthcare, and protection from danger. ;D

EDIT: Oh, and if one of them really pissed us off (like the one that was always trying to murder my mom...) then it ends up in our freezer, now tasty snacks.

 

[Tiwas]

AToE: You do know it's really hard for me not to make a comment along the lines of "mmmm...dead elk"?

I should live with a vegan chick - I'd eat her meat, and she'd get my veggies

 

[Smarrikåka]

So, what's "left"? Now that we're done discussing the "right" way of taking care of animals?

 

[AToE]

AToE: You do know it's really hard for me not to make a comment along the lines of "mmmm...dead elk"?

Man, it's hard for ME to not make a comment along those lines too! Elk is far superior to beef in my opinion, tastes great!

 

[mccann51]

Man, it's hard for ME to not make a comment along those lines too! Elk is far superior to beef in my opinion, tastes great!

Along similar lines, it's unfortunate that midwest prairie ranchers don't take up buffalo instead of cattle. Buffalo meat is delicious, and buffalo feed on native grasses and such, meaning a more "natural" prairie ecosystem.

 

[AToE]

Along similar lines, it's unfortunate that midwest prairie ranchers don't take up buffalo instead of cattle. Buffalo meat is delicious, and buffalo feed on native grasses and such, meaning a more "natural" prairie ecosystem.

One thing I love about bison too is that there simply is no such thing as factory farmed bison (same with elk) so it's not such a crapshoot when you're trying to buy free range meat.

 

[skunkboy]

Along similar lines, it's unfortunate that midwest prairie ranchers don't take up buffalo instead of cattle. Buffalo meat is delicious, and buffalo feed on native grasses and such, meaning a more "natural" prairie ecosystem.

I thought that Buffalo was very lean, and most people would find it different/difficult to cook with? Beefallo was supposed to be all the rage about now...

 

[AToE]

Bison, elk, deer, they're all a lot leaner than beef, and yes do require some adjusted cooking style. They also are a bit of an aquired taste, beef doesn't have a whole lot of flavour other than fat, whereas the other "game" meats have tons more flavour of their own, takes a little getting used to - it's definitely not to everyone's tastes.

 

[Tiwas]

My girlfriend's native Norwegian (same "race" as inuit and american indians), and we grew up up north (think "northern part of Greenland") so...I *love* elk, (rain)deer, bear, wild boar. It's SO much better than beef, and...it's got personality.

 

[AToE]

My girlfriend's native Norwegian (same "race" as inuit and american indians), and we grew up up north (think "northern part of Greenland") so...I *love* elk, (rain)deer, bear, wild boar. It's SO much better than beef, and...it's got personality.

Same ethnicity as the natives from this continent? You guys seem way way too far west for that, our natives are basically north-asian in descent (and look it). Are native Norwegians really that asian looking?

 

[Tiwas]

Same ethnicity as the natives from this continent? You guys seem way way too far west for that, our natives are basically north-asian in descent (and look it). Are native Norwegians really that asian looking?

Thanks for correcting me - I'll try to remember to use "ethnicity" next time

If I'm not mistaken, that people came up through Russia, divided up and either moved west or crossed over the straight (sp?) into N.A. Native Scandinavians (and people from northern Russia) all have the same complexion, slanted eyes, high cheek bones etc etc that the Inuits and Indians have.

 

[AToE]

Thanks for correcting me - I'll try to remember to use "ethnicity" next time

If I'm not mistaken, that people came up through Russia, divided up and either moved west or crossed over the straight (sp?) into N.A. Native Scandinavians (and people from northern Russia) all have the same complexion, slanted eyes, high cheek bones etc etc that the Inuits and Indians have.

I'd just never heard of a big westward migration out of north asia like that, but I guess it makes sense (and it's easy to miss a migration or two in our history, especially since it goes back so many tens of thousands of years!).

I'd never heard of people from Scandinavia looking asian, but hey, you learn something new every day!

 

[Smarrikåka]

They don't really look asian. But they do probably have the same heritage. I'm assuming it's the Sami people that's being discussed btw.

 

[AToE]

I'd say too that "same ethnicity" is going way too far, considering we're talking about between 15,000 and 20,000 years of seperation here - even the Inuit and other NA natives would be considered several different ethnicities (they all look radically different from each other too, a Heida person looks nothing like a Cree, or Nakota, let alone something further south, like Mohawk).

 

[AToE]

They don't really look asian. But they do probably have the same heritage. I'm assuming it's the Sami people that's being discussed btw.

I just looked up the Sami, and they definitely do look like they've got asian ancestry to at least some degree. The similarity to some of our native peoples is fairly strong (not strong enough that I'd guess they'd been seperated recently, but strong enough to guess that they're more closely related than say a NA Native and an Indian or something).

It's weird that asian features ended up in the far north of Europe like that, I'd love to see the migration paths on a map.

To get those kinds of features in Russians (who you'd think would be similar, since they occupy all the land between the two places) you have to travel pretty far east towards Mongolia.

Totally strange, I love it.

 

[AToE]

A quick bit of interneting and it looks like Tiwas is right, the Sami are thought to be in part of Siberian origin, this is based on both linguistics and DNA work. They're not really like the American Natives though, who are wholly of Asian descent - the Sami (apparently) have a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds from Siberian to regular "white" European and peoples inbetween (which makes sense, they were never isolated from Europe the same way the Americans were). So I guess Sami are more of a hybrid, whereas Native Americans are simply population isolation leading to eventual phenotype differences.

That's totally cool, I've never heard of a migration out of Asian across the north to finally end up right on top of Europe. I don't know why, but this makes me smile. I love learning about what our ancestors were up to, those crazy buggers seemed willing to live just about anywhere, cross any sea, do just about anything!

(Can you imagine the first MANIACS to paddle across the Pacific to get to New Zealand, or Hawaii? Those people must have been just totally insane! I salute that!)

 

[AToE]

Man, sorry for all the double posting, but this piqued my interest and got me digging into the ethnic background of Ukrainians, because I've always looked at the Ukrainian side of my family and thought to myself that they really seriously looked Arab (the men, not really the women). And sure enough, with some quick internet digging I find that Ukraine was not only at nearly the center of where the indo-europeans split up, there is also evidence that several of the earlier Ukrainian ethnicities may have in fact been migrants from Iran.

Also, DNA work shows close ties with Poland, Russian (neither of those are surprising) and the Indian subcontinent (obviously most europeans are fairly closely related to Indians, but this is apparently above and beyond that).

I've just barely scratched the surface, but I'm going to have plenty of stuff to read on this, totally interesting.

What I find funny isn't so much that there's that close relation with the Middle East and India (makes sense, they are kind of in the middle, well, north of the middle...), it's that I totally had a hunch about that, just based on the fact that my grandpa looks almost exactly like Saddam Hussien!

 

[ken_schramm]

Human migration

I find this stuff really compelling.

These two resources are pretty fascinating:

Journey of Mankind

The page is is interesting, but all of these theories are under constant revision and attack, and they are all obliged to defend themselves and react to the newest evidence as it presents itself. Still, very intriguing.

LANGUAGES AND LEGENDS; THE MOTHER TONGUE, MIGRATIONS, AND MYTHS:

I have spoken with Dr. Davey, and he is one of the most impressive individuals with whom I have had the chance to speak and correspond. He worked at Los Alamos, is the author of"Techniques in Fast Reactor Critical Experiments" (uh, yeah, that kind of reactor), is knowledgeable with more languages than one can imagine a single person can grasp, and has studied mythology extensively. There is much to be said for the use of language development as evidence of human migration and interaction, and his is some mind-boggling material. He is a genuine heavyweight. Perhaps we should invite him over for some discourse.

Ken

 

[AToE]

Ha, as soon as we started down this path I thought you might be tempted to jump in!

I doubt we'll ever really know a lot of our history from before we were writing the stuff down, but between genetics and linguistics we certainly have a good chance of getting some of it figured out (and people seem to be making great headway so far).

Of course, who knows what % we'll figure out, being that we're talking about a lot of years here, depending on how far back we go, into 5 digits or 6.

 

[Tiwas]

AToE: There are basically two paths of migration into Europe and NA, as far as I know - from Africa, straight up through Europe, and From Africa, though Asia, Russia, and then into NA/Northern Scandinavia. This is based on Africa as the origin of the first humans.

Smarrikåka: I'm talking about the sami, yes. They don't look like they just got out of a plane from Hong Kong, but they do have the same features. I guess, like AToE points out, that the Sami, as they look now, have had more contact, and thus more mating with, white europeans, and thus have more european features than some of the other people that migrated east. For some reason, I believe the Inuit and NA Indians have been more isolated.

Ken: that would be really cool. I love looking at both the original meanings of words (the coolest yet is "berserker", where "ber" is the origin for "bear" (now "bjørn") and "serk" is "clothing" - so...dressed in a bear skin instead of armor) and the paths and origin of words (yuletide - juletid (christmas time, in most scandinavian languages). The English "y" and scandinavian "j" are pronounced almost the same). Does he have anything online ?