🚀 go-pugleaf

yuku@mail.trends.ca (Yuri Kuchinsky) wrote:

>bortiz@cms.cc.wayne.edu wrote:
>
<snip>
>
>: Gourds are dependant upon disturbed
>: areas...such disturbed areas today are usually created by man, but
>: natural disturbances such as river flooding, forest fires, earthquakes,
>: and landslides do occur without man's aid." (p. 113)
>
>If we need to invoke natural disasters such as these, the case for the
>gourd surviving upon its auto-arrival is weakened thereby.

How so? Everyone knows that the Nile floods like clockwork every
year-or did until humans started building dams. I admit I don't know
how it goes there nowadays, but obviously river flooding is not an
uncommon event. Didn't you hear about the floods in various parts of
the US this spring and in years past? In some areas, natural fires are
also very common. Don't you ever see in the news where nearly every
year there are terrible fires in California when things are really dry
from lack of rain, plus the Santa Ana winds that suck additional
moisture out of everything and then fan the flames once they do get
started? Under those conditions it just takes a spark. And there are
plants that are adapted to this sort of conditions, requiring a fire
to pass over in order for the seeds to germinate. Moving along to the
next disaster, they seem to have a fair number of mudslides in
California, too, when it does rain, not to mention earthquakes. I'm
sure you can find similar conditions in many parts of the world. I
just mention Egyptian and US floods and Californian fires, mudslides
and earthquakes as examples showing that these events are not
uncommon.
 
<snip>

>May I remind you also that most of the theories about gourd floating over
>_assume_ that it floated over because it was used as a net flotation
>device by early fisherfolk. So it must have been a cultigen, or at least a
>cultivar by then. Otherwise, there's still a problem of how did it get in
>the water _in the first place_! 

A storm such as a hurricane? An animal, any animal (including a human)
simply discarding it uneaten/unused? Growing on a riverbank and
falling into the water at maturity?

>: So Heiser makes it clear that Lagenaria siceraria can survive without
>: man's aid - contrary to what you seem to be claiming above.
>
>That it can survive by itself is unlikely, in my opinion, especially if
>one has to postulate uncommon events such as forest fires for this to
>happen. 

See "disaster" discussion above.


--
Garry Williams
 gdwill@earthlink.net or
 gdwill@william.salzo.cary.nc.us