7) Weber State College Comment, June 1936, page Ii Ra eeAoy Archeologist studies plant domestication ears ago .ancestors to modern man started domesticating process that Simms said. started domestication,” plants, and a WSC archeologist is out to discover why. Not that Dr. Steven R. Simms thinks the process will help him train weeds not to grow in his lawn, but the research will give insights into how farming came to be an integral part of our é - vv eos : The expedition is being funded by the L.S.B. the first SRA: organization in the middle east. “They fund reconnaissance projects ea “0. Leaky Foundation, and is research effort for that a) “RSENSRS a Sy. ce 4 sane’: Mona gf ae society. “Scientists somewhere used around to think 10,000 cients’ that plant domestication occurred. Now there’s evidence that the process happened as much as 20,000 years ago,” Simms said. About that time people started managing plants, breeding certain kinds of grains to get the ones with the most yield. Those plant manipulations produced more food, but reduced the plants’ ability to live without man. They became dependant on humans in order to keep growing year after year—the definition of plant domestication. Corn is the most extreme example. “These plants need humans Ron Holt, efficiency, if they and use too many insecticides. Carried to the extreme, the farming industry would collapse and the 1,649,000 people in Utah would have to find what food they could in the sage covered deserts and forested mountains. Fortunately, however, agriculture still works, people can hunt and gather at the local grocery store and Simms will have to live with the bedouins. “I guess I'll be foraging for wild plants,” he said. You may survive radiation, but look out for the common their next biggest threat zoology, said that, like AIDS of victims, those exposed to less-than-lethal radiation can lose their body’s immune system. Dr. Graff has used radiation for years in research with plants and animals. “They are vulnerable to any diseasecausing micro-organism including bacteria and viruses — whatever comes along,” Graff said. Some radioactive rays have enough energy to shoot completely through the body. In many instances these rays go through without any significant damage, as is the case of X-rays. But if the radiation hits a cell at exactly the right moment, it can alter the cell's genetic makeup and cause what is commonly referred to as radiation sickness. “The radiation changes the genetic endowment of the cell. It may change the cell to the point where it’s killed, or it may not, however, most mutations are lethal,” Graff said. Cells that are dividing are particularly susceptible to radiation, and those tissue areas of the body that are going. Farmers that we're ruining the land,” he said. junct professor in the anthropology department, are spending the month of June in the middle eastern country of Jordan, living with a small group of wandering bedouins who use primitive agricultural methods. “They are not living fossils, but could be used as an analogy for what happened before. They’re still foraging for wild plants and we feel this represents the kind of decision making that happened 10 to 20,000 years ago. It will give us insights into the thought Soviet Union and have been saying for a number of years an ad- could be the common cold. Dr. Darrell J. Graff, professor hunted gathered. The only problem is that with many people congregated into small areas there wouldn't be enough Sego lilies and wild onions to go around. “So we use agriculture,” Simms said. But that also has its problems. “Once you get started in agriculture you tend to get locked into it, and eventually you destroy the system. You erode the land, over fertilize and ex- r those who survived the radiation leak at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl] in the said. People would be better off, in terms of Simms is the director of the archeological technician program at the he and Simms. penditure of petroleum,” he said. humans need the plants,” he said. college and intelligence, Despite the fact that most people look at growing food as a step above hunting for grubs in the woods, American agriculture is the most inefficient system in the world, Simms said. “For every calorie we get out of wheat we put 10 calories in through ex- years ago Left to itself, corn would become tinct in two years, Simms said. that give information about the general questions of human history,” he explained. The whys of agriculture have long puzzled archeologists, Simms said. Ancient hunters and gatherers knew that planting seeds would produce crops, yet for thousands of years they avoided farming. That may be due partly to the an- through what Graff calls rapid mitosis, or cell division, are more adversly affected. Areas which normally have quick cell division include blood tissues in the bone marrow and the lining of the intestinal track. An average person loses one-half pound of intestinal tissue each day, Graff said. “Newborns or pregnant mothers bone marrow transplants are ineffective and death is the natural outcome. A dose of 450 to 5,000 rads would obliterate intestinal cells that allow food to be passed into the bloodstream. Internal hemorraging, and symptoms similar to cholera, would result and death would come in a maximum of about three days. ...like AIDS victims, those exposed to less-thanlethal radiation can lose their body's immune system. would be especially affected,” he said. Radiation is measured in rads, the Any radiation measured over 5,000 rads affects the nervous system and units of radioactivity absorbed by the body, and a dosage less than 300 rads would probably not be immediately lethal. However, it would, to varying degrees, destroy the disease-fighting cells in the blood system as well as the platelets, which give the blood its clotting ability. Most radiation from the Chernobyl] incident probably falls in this category, Graff said. For between 300 and 450 rads, all of causes the brain to short-circuit, a pro- the bone marrow would be destroyed, cess that causes death within a few seconds to several hours, Graff said. The professor said that the lower levels of radiation also seem to interact with the water in the cell to form hydrogen peroxide which combines with oxygen and causes breaks in the cell’s DNA genetic structure. A substance found in eggs provides some protection by preventing the formation of the peroxide and there are cold some medications available that also give limited immunity to other radioctive effects. But Graff noted that iodine pills, such as those given to residents in the Soviet Union after the nuclear accident and those currently being purchased by Utahns concerned with the effects of local fallout, offer only limited protection. “When there is an atomic reaction several isotopes are formed, and the iodine pills only protect from one,” he said. Graff, who grew up in southern Utah during the time of above-ground nuclear testing in Nevada, said that many times effects from low level radiation take years to surface, and scientists don’t as yet completely understand what all the results are. Many effects of naturally-occurring low-level radiation are just beginning to be understood. “Tobacco plants, for example, absorb an isotope, polonium 210, which goes into the lungs when smoked, and, because of the tar and nicotine, stays in the lungs. It’s estimated that a person who smokes two packs of cigarettes a day gets the equivalent radiation of 300 X-rays per year. It may be that the radiation is actually producing the lung cancer,” he said.