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 57 your mandible DHJanzen100511.jpg high resolution
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| The results of my archaeological dig in the cassava patch were spectacular, and again, serendipituously unearthed yet another way that bushmeat harvest is a complex thing to measure. The hardest bone in your body is your lower mandible. When a newly snared animal was brought back and butchered, the soft non-muscle parts mostly went to the soup pot and the dogs. The dismemberment of the carcass created the bushmeat pieces to smoke and lug to Edea. And the pieces that were not deemed worthy of that market were tossed to the dogs, who got to worry off the small and softer bits. But the remainder then went into the ground as fertilizer for the mounds below the cassava - nitrogen and calcium, two key molecules for the plant on very nutrient-poor white sand soils. Degredation moves along, and what is left are mandibles and teeth, ranging from forest hogs (the brown large mandible at the top) to slender duiker mandibles and porcupine mandibles sporting long yellow incisors. A red shotgun shell from times past links with the portion of a monkey cranium. Varanid lizard mandibles with their rounded molars tell of animals (and scavengers) of which I saw not a trace in the forest. | ||
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