SNIPPETS-Early farmers minded their own beeswax

Early farmers had a sweet tooth. Pieces of Neolithic crockery from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa dating back 9,000 years bear chemical traces of beeswax, according to an analysis of thousands of potsherds that appeared in Nature. Farming cultures of the time probably sweetened their food with honey, but bee products may have also found use in religious ceremonies and early medicines, researchers suspect.

The relationship between humans and bees is much more ancient. A 40,000-year-old lump of beeswax from Border Cave in South Africa may have been used to help bind stone points to wood to make spears, for instance, and depictions of beehives are common in prehistoric rock art found all over sub-Saharan Africa. But the latest research is the strongest evidence yet that early farming cultures widely exploited products from honeybees (Apis mellifera).

Agriculture emerged in the Middle East around 10,000 years ago, and waves of migrants carried the practice to Europe. A team led by Mélanie Roffet-Salque and Richard Evershed, chemists at the University of Bristol, U.K., looked for beeswax residues in more than 6,400 clay cooking vessels across Eurasia dating from between 9,000 and 4,000 years ago. Richard’s team has previously discovered fat signatures of meat, dairy and cheese in some of the same ancient crockery.

Mélanie says the widespread use of bee products among Neolithic groups could mark the beginnings of honeybee domestication. Neolithic farmers began co-opting cattle, pigs and other animals around this time, and may have seen honeybees in a similar light. But climate limited the spread of bees — whether wild or farmed — into Northern Europe. Pottery from Ireland, Scotland and northern Scandinavia contained no traces of beeswax, Mélanie notes.

Do indoor plants improve our health?

A  large body of research ties access to nature and green spaces to improvements in both mental and physical health, but evidence that indoor plants confer similar benefits is scanty, and any effects that may exist “are probably weaker than those we find with outdoor forms of nature,” said Frances E Kuo, an associate professor of natural resources and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Plants absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen, and a 1989 NASA study suggested houseplants and their root systems, soil and bacteria absorb indoor pollutants like benzene, trichloroethylene and formaldehyde. But having houseplants is unlikely to lead to significant improvements in indoor air quality and there is a potential downside since plants produce allergens that can elicit immune responses that can be severe, said Thomas Whitlow, an urban ecologist at Cornell University.

That said, several small studies have found health benefits associated with indoor plants. A small 1998 Norwegian study reported that workers had fewer complaints of fatigue, cough, dry throat and itching when they had plants in the office, and experiments in England and the Netherlands found that employees in buildings with plants were more productive, had better concentration and greater work satisfaction than those in bare offices.

Two randomised controlled trials reported that surgical patients placed in rooms with plants reported less pain, anxiety, stress and fatigue than patients without plants. Overall, they had lower systolic blood pressure, were more satisfied about their rooms and felt more positively toward hospital workers. One of the studies reported that patients who had their appendix removed used fewer painkillers if they had plants in their rooms.

There is also some research suggesting that flowers make people happy, and that elderly people who receive flowers as gifts report improvements in mood and even memory. But that study was funded in part by the Society of American Florists, as was another study that found flowers made people more compassionate, less anxious and less depressed.

Roni Caryn Rabin