A further conundrum

Here’s another conundrum; when is a poo not a poo? Now, this is a tricky one, full of conjecture. I suspect I could ask a thousand people and receive a thousand different answers! However, for today, I’m going to answer this one as follows.

A poo is not a poo when it is actually of Betty Crocker origin and masquerading as Neolithic faeces!

How, you may well ask, did I encounter a mutated Betty Crocker creation masquerading as Neolithic faeces? Good question!

The children both attend a fabulous Archaeology Club, where the education officers work ever so hard to make what I would think of as a very dry subject, really exciting and interactive for children. At our last session we learned that one point of great significance when looking at the Neolithic period is the shift from hunter/gatherer to farming.

I’m not certain I would have thought of this, but I take my hat off to whoever did. The children donned special rubber gloves, picked up their tools and magnifiers and dug into their assigned ‘sample’ to see if they had the poo of a hunter/gatherer (rich in small pieces of nut and fruit seeds) or that of a farmer (bit more dense but with small fragments of bone and fewer nut/seed particles).

I truly hope that this aspect of the Neolithic period will now be etched on the children’s brains. It certainly will stick with me. Who needs to pore over books when you can dissect mutant poo? I do so value all the people out there who bring life and laughter to the learning process – it need not all be tedious.