Eureka! by Scott LaFee

The ancient Nazca of Peru were terrific artists, best remembered now for creating their complex line drawings of animals and geometric objects that can only be fully appreciated from the air. Nazca knowledge of their environment, however, seems to have left something to be desired, and may be the reason the culture disappeared around 1,500 years ago.

A huge flood is usually credited with wiping out the Nazca culture around 500 A.D., but new pollen study suggests it was deforestation that cleared the way to their extinction. By cutting down all of the native huarango trees in the region to plant crops of maize, cotton and beans, the Nazca irreparably altered their environment. The trees grow roots that reach as deep as 30 feet and live upward of 1,000 years. By trapping airborne moisture, huarango trees created and anchored oases in the relative desert of southern Peru.

With the disappearance of the trees, arid conditions and nutrient-depleted soil pretty quickly marginalized Nazca society. When big floods came, the Nazca were easily washed away, leaving behind only their cryptic art.

VERBATIM

We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.

— American inventor Thomas Edison (1847-1931)

BRAIN SWEAT

Can you decipher these rebuses? Hint: A good visual imagination is instrumental.

1. P O

2. BA

3. ECLART

QUIRKS OF NATURE

Female fiddler crabs mate with their male neighbors in exchange for protection. Both genders are extremely territorial. Researchers had been puzzled why females seemed just as successful at defending their ground as males despite having smaller claws.

Answer: They swap sex for security, the first known case in nature of male and female neighbors teaming up to defend territory.

BRAIN SWEAT ANSWER

1. Piano (P and O)

2. Tuba (Two BA)

3. Clarinet (CLAR in ET)

PRIME NUMBERS

600 — Cost estimate, in millions of dollars, by Anatoly Perminov, head of Russia's space agency, to build a nuclear-powered spacecraft capable of reaching Mars

Source: New Scientist

ANTHROPOLOGY 101

In medieval France, animals judged to be possessed by the devil were hanged. Because their meat was deemed sinful, convicted cows and pigs were burned, not butchered. Hungry peasants watched their farm animals get cooked without benefit.

Such things don't happen nowadays, though occasionally an offending animal will find itself on the wrong side of "justice." In 1916, for example, a circus elephant killed three men. The elephant was lynched using a railroad derrick and steel cables.

PATENTLY ABSURD

Boxing may be known as the "sweet science," but it's also a brutal sport where competitors take too many blows to the head. That's neither smart nor safe. Thus, the "Bubble Head," patented in 1987. It consists of a clear plastic bag filled with a shock-absorbing, translucent fluid and, here's the neat part, a pressure-sensitive reservoir filled with red dye.

Each time a Bubble Head-wearing boxer gets smacked in the noggin, a little bit of dye is released into the surrounding fluid. At the end of the fight, if both boxers are still standing, the winner is determined by which fighter has the least red head.

To find out more about Scott LaFee and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM