Soil, known to some farmers as black gold, is as much a necessity as water, but is nowhere near as simple. Beneath your feet lives a complex chemical stew of geologic and organic components, of swimming microbes and rhizomatic networks.
How does one study plants that no longer exist? In short: burnt seeds. Paleoethnobotanists sift through ancient dirt at archaeological dig sites to find seeds preserved by partial burning. Once back at the lab, they spend much of their time studying minute differences in seed morphology.
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