John & Susy Pint

Por John Pint Versión en inglés ¿Guajolotes con huaraches? Si suena como algo que solo podría suceder en México, ese puede ser exactamente el caso. ¿Es cierta la historia? Tú eres el juez. En primer lugar, permítanme decir que el pavo es muy mexicano y es probable que los mayas fueron los primeros en domesticarlo. La palabra guajolote proviene del náhuatl "huexólotl", que significa "monstruo viejo", refiriéndose de manera bastante poco amable a la apariencia del macho. Los mayas fueron probablemente los primeros en domesticar el pavo. Imagen de Redblakmonster, tomado del Códice Laud. En cuanto a su sabor, Bernardino de Sahagún dijo: "Tiene la mejor carne de todas las aves… Es muy sabrosa su carne, y gorda, es corpulenta...” Esa ave tan sabrosa se ha criado en grandes cantidades en México durante al menos dos milenios, lo que me lleva a una historia del arqueólogo Peter Jiménez, quien pasó muchos años estudiando y desenterrando las célebres ruinas de la Zona Arq...

    Once upon a time, hundreds of turkeys—each wearing a tiny pair of sandals—would be herded along a 100-kilometer road to Guadalajara. Image by Copilot. By John Pint Guajolotes wearing huaraches? If it sounds like something that could only happen in Mexico, that may be exactly the case. Is the story true? You be the judge. First, let me state that the turkey is very Mexican and it’s likely that the Mayans were the first to domesticate it. In Mexico, it is popularly called guajolote, which comes from the Nahuatl  “huexólotl,” meaning “old monster,” rather unkindly referring to the male’s looks. The Mayans were likely the first to domesticate the turkey. The Spaniards took them to Europe and the Turks were soon raising them and exporting them to England, where people took to calling them “Turkey birds” … and the name stuck. Image by Redblakmonster after the Laud Codex. As far as its taste goes,  Bernardino de Sahagún said: “It has the best meat of all the birds; it i...

A BICOM practitioner tests whether his patient has a wheat allergy. Photo John Pint    By John Pint Bioresonance is one of many alternative approaches to medicine widely available in Mexico. My attention was first brought to it by a neighbor who told me the story of a friend of his, a Canadian Olympic gold medal winner, who was bit by a tick near Toronto, turning him into something of a zombie for two years until he was pulled out of his fog by a one-month-long treatment of antibiotics. Informed that the law forbade the prescription of more than a month of antibiotics, he searched for alternatives and was told that “the Rife machine” could cure Lyme disease…. and that someone happened to have one of those machines in the town of Niagara Falls.  The athlete drove to Niagara Falls and in three months was cured.  The Rife machine—built by US microscope inventor Royal Raymond Rife in the 1920s—is just one of several independently developed devices that I have ...

 By John Pint Recently I stumbled upon a Facebook thread discussing the meaning of candle-light drawings scratched on the wall of a Spanish-Inquisition jail cell in the early 1500s. The sponsor of this conversation, an organization called Ruta Conquistadores, had published photos of the “mural” which had been copied and made available for public viewing in the Museo Histórico de Llerena, a small town in Spain’s Extremadura region. The drawings seem to show Spanish soldiers, native Mexicans and several huge snakes possibly adorned with feathers. Among soldiers and horses, a woman can be seen. Could she represent La Malinche? Quetzalcoatl in the calaboose Who might have been drawing conquistadores and Quetzalcoatl on the wall of a Spanish calaboose at such an early date?  Fortunately, I was able to contact Luisma Domínguez, director of Ruta Conquistadores, who kindly passed on to me explanations of the curious drawings, by local historian Manuel Toro and archivist Francisco Mate...

The Caves of Kishb Chapter 13 of “Underground in Arabia” by John Pint The project to hunt for caves in the vast, volcanic wastes of western Saudi Arabia, got its start with a little push from “the grand old man of US caving,” Bill Halliday. No sooner had I arrived at the Saudi Geologicial Survey in Jeddah, than I was handed a computer printout by my new boss, Mahmoud. “Someone has sent you an Email, John,” he told me. Well, I didn’t even have an Email address yet, so I figured this must really be important…and so it was: “I notice there are lava fields not far from Jeddah,” wrote Halliday. “Are there any lava tubes to be found?” Well, I repeated that question to quite a few French, US and Saudi geologists during the next few months, but none of them could give me an answer. “The man you need to talk to,” they all replied, “is Dr. John Roobol. He spent years in those miserable lava fields. Right now he’s on leave, but he’ll be back.” Nearly a year went by before John Roobol finished sai...