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while in Oxford the Reverend William Buckland wrote the first scientific description of dinosaurs and, not incidentally, became the world’s leading authority on coprolites—fossilized feces.
So sedentism meant poorer diets, more illness, lots of toothache and gum disease, and earlier deaths. What is truly extraordinary is that these are all still factors in our lives today. Out of the thirty thousand types of edible plants thought to exist on Earth, just eleven—corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, cassava, sorghum, millet, beans, barley, rye, and oats—account for 93 percent of all that humans eat, and every one of them was first cultivated by our Neolithic ancestors.
Çatalhöyük
The head of the household was the husband—a compound term meaning literally “householder” or “house owner.” His role as manager and provider was so central that the practice of land management became known as husbandry. Only much later did husband come to signify a marriage partner.
So little did people think of rooms in the modern sense that the word room, with the meaning of an enclosed chamber or distinct space, isn’t recorded in English until the time of the Tudors.
Over time, the word board came to signify not just the dining surface but the meal itself, which is where the board comes from in room and board.
As houses sprouted wings and spread, and domestic arrangements grew more complex, words were created or adapted to describe all the new room types: study, bedchamber, privy chamber, closet, oratory (for a place of prayer), parlor, withdrawing chamber, and library (in a domestic as opposed to institutional sense) all date from the fourteenth century or a little earlier. Others soon followed: gallery, long gallery, presence chamber, tiring (for attiring) chamber, salon or saloon, apartment, lodgings, suite, and estude. “How widely different is all this from the ancient custom of the whole
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