Ancient dining on the roof of the world

A study of ancient life on the
Tibetan Plateau, the so-called roof
of the world, says it was the ability
to grow barley that allowed
humans to establish permanent
settlements at very high altitudes.
Archaeologists collected stone
artifacts and charred plant remains
from 53 sites across the
northeastern plateau to learn how
humans came to live at high
altitudes.
Their findings showed that people
established year-round
settlements as high as 2,500 meters
above sea level (about 8,200 feet)
starting around 5,200 years ago. But
the settlers subsisted largely on
frost-sensitive grains that would
not have thrived at higher
altitudes.
The first settlements above 3,000
metres (nearly 10,000 feet)
appeared about 3,600 years ago,
and showed evidence of hardier
grains: mostly barley, plus some
wheat and broomcorn millet, said
the study, which was published in
the journal Science.
“As barley is frost hardy and cold
tolerant, it is growing very well on
the Tibetan Plateau even today,”
Fahu Chen, an archaeologist at
Lanzhou University in China and the
lead author of the study, wrote in
an email message.
“Barley agriculture could provide
people with enough sustained food
supplies even during wintertime.”
The grain was introduced to the
area “around 4,000 years ago along
with wheat and sheep.”
Though early settlers probably
made their way up the plateau in
pursuit of prey as long as 20,000
years ago, more recent ones were
more likely driven there by cold
weather, Chen said, adding that as
the temperature drops, “people
need to move to a new
uninhabited region or improve
technology to get enough food
resources.”
Are Some Professions Less Honest
Than Others? Bank On It,
Researchers Find
As banking scandals have mounted
over the past decade, some critics
have suggested that the industry
simply harbors a dishonest culture.
Now, three economists from the
University of Zurich have tested the
idea.
They found that bankers were
about as honest as anyone else –
until they were reminded that they
were bankers.
One hundred twenty-eight
employees from a large
international bank were assigned
either to a group that answered
questions about their profession
(“What is your job?”) or general
questions (“How much TV do you
watch?”). Each employee was then
asked to toss a coin 10 times and
report the outcomes online.
There was an advantage, however,
to lying: The subjects were told in
advance that they would get a $20
reward if a given toss came up
heads or tails -—as long as the
overall winning percentage they
reported was greater than that of
another randomly chosen
participant.
The group that hadn’t been asked
about their profession was largely
honest, reporting a winning toss
51.6 per cent of the time. The other
group reported 58.2 per cent
winning tosses. The researchers
calculated that 26 per cent of the
bankers in the latter group had
cheated, compared with almost
none of the first group.
New York Times Service