Subject: Re: Oh, buoy! A Dialect!

From: Jean-Joseph Cote <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 00:00:41 -0400

Elliott asks:
>> JJ: I was under the impression that honey remained in fine
>> condition for an essentially indefinite length of time (or at
>> least for thousands of years).
>What's the story here?  Has someone dug up ancient Egyptian
>honey still edible?

Precisely.  Or that's my understanding, at least.  Could be baloney, I
suppose.  Did somebody actually eat it?  Don't know, but I've heard that
some Soviet archaeologists have dined on mammoth.

Jean-Joseph (who is pleased that the honey definition is evidence that
we're seeing Mr. Dominus again -- us hyphenated guys have to stick
together!)

---

From: Elliott A Moreton <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 13:23:13 -0400 (EDT)

> some Soviet archaeologists have dined on mammoth.

In the introduction to _The GULAG Archipelago_, Solzhynitsin, whose name 
I have no idea how to spell, quotes a short news item from a Soviet 
scientific journal circa 1948 about the discovery of a mammoth frozen in 
the ice of northern Siberia.  The paragraph says it was in such excellent 
condition that it was immediately devoured by its discoverers.  To anyone 
who had been in the camps, S. says, the meaning is plain:  The corpse was 
found by a half-starved gang of slave laborers.  Preserving 
paleontological evidence was not the first thing on their minds.

em