weird factoid-manna from heaven

[RainDog]

okay, just have to share this with someone.

I was looking at an old newspaper from August 1927 (The Babe hit the first ball out of the stadium...maybe hit a steer, the reporter said...Ruth and Gehrig in their homerun race...people competing to fly to Hawaii in those little planes...Sacco and Vanzetti appeal dismissed...The New Republic takes a one page ad requesting the facts of the case be reconsidered...)

anyway, there was this little blurb about this entymologists who were in the middle east who found the origin of "manna from heaven."

apparently some insect which lives in tamarind trees secretes something like sugar which then falls from them.

the arabs referred to it as "heavenly manna"

I'd never heard this before, but maybe it's just me. Has anyone else every heard this before?

I wonder because I grew up going to church three times a week, and it seems they never knew this either...or didn't want to know it.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

1. So manna is actually tamarind tree insect shit?

EEEEEEWWWWWEEEEE

[RainDog]

2. LOL

not shit...more like sweat, I think.

MUCH BETTER, huh? :)

they thought it was like sap from the tree until they got up close and personal.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

7. OK guess I got my SECRETE crossed with my EXCRETE

[Melsky]

3. Hey, that's some good shit!

Sheesh, and those fundies think we're weird.

[GregW]

4. I thought it was seagull shit or something

You know, from that Mormon fantasy?

[RainDog]

5. I don't know that Mormon fantasy

seagull shit?

do tell.

[scarlet_owl]

6. I have heard that before

Some think manna is a type of sweet lichen and others think it is the secretion of a certain insect. Whatever it is, it was scraped off of rocks.