Dr. Frank's What's-it

How do you carve up a cow?

First you cut the meat off the bones. You start by severing the muscles from the joints with a sharp knife. The fibrous meat can then easily be scraped off, from top to bottom. After you've removed the flesh there's still a lot of goodness left. Deep in the long bones and vertebrae lies the marrow. To get at this delicacy you smash the bones and scrape out the marrow or simply boil it out in water. What's left is a pile of naked bones with traces of scratching and scraping as well as the small debris of bone that contained marrow.

Archaeologists found just such a pile -- a huge one -- when they were excavating a Stone Age settlement in the small town of Herxheim in south-western Germany. The only difference is that the bones aren't from cattle…

Der Spiegel reports on apparent evidence of human livestock in Stone Age Germany.

(via Hit and Run.)

Posted by Dr. Frank at December 10, 2009 11:59 PM | TrackBack