Re: apples on a stick

I'll copy a posting I did last January. I still have only read the
article -- I haven't seen the book:
I'm reading an article in the Jan-Feb issue of The
American Scientist by B. E. Juniper, Plant Scientist at Oxford: The
Mysterious Origin of the Sweet Apple, summarizing a 2006 book by
Juniper and D. J. Mabberley The Story of the Apple (Timber Press).
They believe the common apple developed in the Tien Shan, and was
spread with the domestication of horses. "In the guts of both horse
and donkey, directed by human travelers, the apple pip moved west. The
sharp hooves of these animals unwittingly planted the apple pips at
every oasis." It's not clear to me whether they discount purposeful
transport of a human food.
Anyway, their work looks like something to be considered by anyone
concerned with the jabloko-malum problem.
Dan

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
>
> Indeed, only Wonder Warthog could deny the ubiquity of
> the apple wanderwort. It seems to be along the lines
> of wheel and ball. There was a popular book on the
> origin of food I read a a while that stated that
> domesticated edible apples, as opposed to crabapples
> or sour apples, were from China, I believe Sichuan,
> and spread from there via cuttings, that apples from
> seed never breed true and are almost invariably
> inedible. I only know what the book says and can't
> vouch for it, but as they say "apples on a stick, make
> me sick".
>
>
> --- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> > wrote:
> [snip]
> > Apples at the bottom of
> > http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/Opr.html
> > from IE to Basque to Proto-Turkic to Kartvelian; it
> > seems to be the
> > same root. How anybody would show that this is not a
> > Wanderwort (ie.
> > well-traveled loanword) I can't fathom.
> >
> >
> > Torsten