Mollie Battenhouse Talks Wines with Ancient Lineage

Wednesday, February 10 10:07 am

Mollie Battenhouse, the sommelier and wine director of New York City wine shop Maslow 6, will be one of the speakers at Adventures in the Global Kitchen: Wines with Ancient Lineage on February 17 at the Museum. She recently answered some questions about the upcoming talk and shared tips for budding oenophiles.

How did you become interested in wines?

It was through my love of food that I found wine. Tasting wines at the various restaurants I worked in, and later in cooking school, fueled the fire. Then I went to work for Joshua Wesson at [wine store] Best Cellars, and I was hooked on the business.

How has viticulture evolved since the time of the Silk Road?

The interesting thing about this part of the world and other ancient wine regions is the mixture of viticultural methods. There are still some old and very traditional ways [wine makers] work with the vines, such as burying them under the ground for the winter and propping them back up on supports when the weather warms up. You can also find very modern trellising techniques.

What are the key elements to consider when pairing wine and food?

Think of food in terms of sweet, sour, bitter, salty, spicy or savory, then choose a wine. Each of these components relates to the components of wine: sugar, acid, alcohol, and tannin. A few short rules: avoid tannic or alcoholic wines with salt and spice, sugar needs sugar, and acid needs acid. Salt also needs acid. Balancing complexity and intensity of flavor comes next.

What are some of your favorite food and wine pairings?

Pork belly and Riesling—well, pork anything and Riesling would be fine! Both Rieslings and Chenin Blanc pair well with most foods and are really beautiful with cheeses.

What’s the best way to learn more about wine?

Drink more wine! Try something new the next time you go wine shopping. Ask for a recommendation from the store staff. If you’re really interested in learning, buy a book like Idiot’s Guide to Wine by Tara Thomas or Wine For Dummies by Mary Ewing-Mulligan and Ed McCarthy.

What can guests expect to take away from your discussion at the upcoming program Adventures in the Global Kitchen: Wines with Ancient Lineage?

Hopefully, they’ll realize that China makes wine and is actually one of the largest grape-growing and wine-producing countries. It also has a very long history of grape growing and winemaking. In the not-so-far future, we may be able to do this lecture again and serve all Chinese wines!

New Video Shows Dung Beetles Benefiting Humankind

Tuesday, February 09 11:30 am

With their jewel colors and prehistoric-looking legs and horns, scarab beetles may well be the most charismatic insects in the world. Yet they’re known more humbly as dung beetles due to their inordinate attraction to poop. Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History are discovering that these beetles’ dung-loving lifestyle is actually a huge help for humankind—and is at risk of decline.

To these beetles, dung is both a meal and a medium in which to lay their eggs. Dung beetles can clear a landscape of fresh dung within minutes, balling it up and burying it for their use. When you consider the amount of dung deposited on Earth—rain forest mammals in Panama, for example, drop 3,000 kilograms of it per kilometer per year—this is no small feat.

The beetles’ relocation of dung offers the land—and people—a number of services. Seeds present in the dung are planted, the soil becomes fertilized, and plant growth flourishes. What’s more, dung beetles literally take food from the mouths of the pests and parasites that thrive in dung and could otherwise harm humans and livestock. Because dung beetles are found nearly everywhere on Earth, their benefits add up. Dung beetle ecosystem services, for example, save the U.S. cattle industry an estimated 380 million dollars each year.

Elizabeth Nichols and Andrés Gómez, both researchers at the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at AMNH, and Sacha Spector, an AMNH research associate, are now mapping the ecosystem services of dung beetles in moist tropical forests. The work is identifying where forestry and farming are making it harder for beetles to find suitable habitats. Human use of the land is hampering the beetle benefits we may take for granted.

View the new map in the latest BioBulletin Snapshot by AMNH’s Science Bulletins program, below. The piece will play as an HD video in AMNH’s Hall of Biodiversity and at 14 science centers worldwide until February 19th. It is the first in a series of BioBulletins to celebrate the 2010 International Year of Biodiversity.

Click to view ‘Dung Beetles Help from the Ground Up’

Podcast: The Perfumed Road

10:04 am

Frankincense, myrrh, patchouli, jasmine — aromatics were valuable commodities traded along the ancient Silk Road, and they are still prized today.  Renowned perfumer Mandy Aftel, the nose behind Aftelier perfumes, awakens the senses to the amazing world of aromatics and discusses their fascinating history.

Aftel, the author of books including Essence and Alchemy: A book of Perfume, Aroma and Scents and Sensibilities, leads  Aromatics Along the Silk Road, recorded on January 20, 2010 at the American Museum of Natural History.

Podcast: Download | RSS | iTunes (55 mins, 50 MB)

After Darwin at AMNH: Ian Tattersall

Thursday, February 04 5:26 pm

Curator Ian Tattersall on Darwin’s Thoughts About the Fossil Evidence for Human Evolution

Scientists at the American Museum of Natural History continue to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and the 1859 publication of On the Origin of Species with a collection of vignettes describing expeditions and ideas with links to Darwin’s seminal work.

Below is an excerpt of a longer piece that Ian Tattersall wrote for Evolution: Education and Outreach in 2009.

Charles Darwin was curiously unforthcoming on the subject of human evolution as viewed through the fossil record, to the point of being virtually silent. He was, of course, most famously reticent on the matter in On the Origin of Species, … [and] this is true even of his 1871 book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex in which Darwin finally forced himself to confront the implications of his theory for the origin of humankind [but in which he barely managed even a passing reference to the Neanderthal fossil that by then was the subject of extensive scientific speculation.]

There were…many reasons why Darwin should have been disposed in The Descent of Man to shrink from any substantive discussion of whether extinct human relatives might actually be represented in fossil form. The fossil and antiquarian records were awash with fakes; any discussion of human ancestry was rife with social and political pitfalls; and anyway, by his own close colleague’s testimony, the record contained nothing that could have any relevance to ancient and now-extinct human precursors. Add to that Darwin’s innate suspicion of the distorting effects of incompleteness in the fossil record, and he may have felt that a large degree of discretion on the matter was mandatory.

The Feldhofer skullcap--the Neanderthal type specimen-- was discovered in a limestone cave in 1857 and is one of a handful of fossils that Darwin could have been aware of while writing The Origin of Species. The image includes an associated zygomaticomaxillary fragment that was discovered in the miners’ dump almost a century and a half later, in 1997. Credit: AMNH

None of this means, of course, that The Descent of Man has not exerted an immense influence on the sciences of human origins over the last century and a half. Just as it is easy for English speakers to forget how much they owe to William Shakespeare for the language they use daily, we tend to lose sight of the fact that much received wisdom in paleoanthropology has come down to us direct from Darwin. Darwin it was who proposed a mechanism for the structural continuity of human beings with the rest of the living world and who gave a detailed argument for human descent from an “ape-like progenitor.” It was Darwin who documented beyond doubt, in The Descent of Man, that all living humans belong to a unitary species with a single origin—which we now know, on the basis of evidence of which Darwin could never have dreamed, to have been around 200,000 years ago. He also had the inspired hunch that our species originated in the continent of Africa—and again, this guess has been amply substantiated by later science. Darwin’s perceptions on the behaviors of other primates and how they relate to the way humans behave were remarkably astute, particularly given the highly anecdotal nature of what was then known. Read more »

Science Bulletins Bring the Research Home

Wednesday, February 03 2:46 pm

For years, visitors to the American Museum of Natural History have enjoyed award-winning Science Bulletin video productions—visually stunning updates on the latest in astrophysics, Earth sciences, biodiversity, and human biology—displayed on high-definition plasma screens in four permanent halls in the Museum.  All four Bulletins (Astro, Earth, Bio, and Human) use a blend of documentary videos, three-dimensional animation, and data visualization to bring scientific research to life for adults and children alike.

Science Bulletins are also distributed to nearly 40 museums and science centers around the world, bringing the latest science to an audience of more than 10 million people. Additionally, Science Bulletins are available online.

Click to Watch: HPV: Treating Cancer Caused by Viruses

Many of these features are six- to eight-minute documentaries that follow scientists to field sites and laboratories around the world to explore topics ranging from the search for ultra-high energy cosmic rays to the rapid evolution of fish species along the Lower Congo River, to the latest research on human papillomaviruses (HPV) and the various cancers they can trigger in humans. Read more »