Lyophilization.
Fancy term, right? It means freeze drying. It’s a process I used decades ago for my medical and pharmaceutical product development projects. It preserves the biological quality of the specimens.
And, I bet you think it’s a really new process. I know I did.
Except, Drs. B Star, S Boessenkool, AT Gondek, H Knutsen, HM Nistelberger, KS Jakobsen, NC Stnseth, and S Jentoft (all from the University of Oslo), plus Drs. EA Nikulina (Schleswig-Holstein State Museums Foundation, Germany) , AK Hufthammer (University of Bergen), C Pampoulie (Marine and Freshwater Research Institute, Iceland) C Andre (University of Gothenburg), J Dierkingh and C Petereith (of Germany’s GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel), JH Barrett (Cambridge University, England) and a German Photographer (D Heinrich ) just discussedthe ancient practice of freeze-drying. How ancient? From the time of the Vikings.
Way back (say around the year 1000 CE or so), Vikings (living on the Baltic Sea near Haithabu, Germany) enjoyed a wonderful meal of cod. How do we know that? They disposed of the bones there. And, what makes this special? The cod didn’t come from Haithabu. Nope- it came from the Barents Sea region (far north, in the Arctic Circle) of Norway.
How do we know that? DNA sequencing of the cod. Which you might have guessed if I had also shared the title of the PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’) article by now: Ancient DNA reveals the Arctic origin of Viking Age cod from Haithabu, Germany.
Which meant that the Vikings had to figure out how to transport the cod to Germany for their meals- without losing the integrity of the fish and its protein. That’s a journey of some 2000 kilometers, which would take about a month.
The good thing? Freeze-dried cod is a valid food that lasts about 5 years.
Now, obviously (OK, realistically), the Vikings did not have a vacuum oven, which is what I’ve used to lyophilize our samples. No, what they did was hang the fish in the Arctic, exposing it to the sun, and added salt to the skins of the fish. That dried out the fish and the salt removed the water. (And, by removing the water, microbial contamination is retarded, if not completely inhibited.) Obviously, it took a lot longer without the vacuum (since there was no way to change the freezing point; everything was at 1 atmosphere.)
I still think that’s pretty cool.
Well I must admit, I didn’t have a clue what lyophilization was! Very interesting since the only thing I think of when freeze drying are apples and pineapples!
Freeze drying pineapples…. Now, there’s an application that never crossed my mind, Martha. (I do have quite a few ideas about what/who can be improved by dessication…)
It is cool! We humans don’t give our ancestors enough credit sometimes (instead, attributing their technological achievements to space aliens, etc.)
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Yup. It reminds me of the old adage- there’s nothing new under the sun, Alana.