Buttered or Not?

Archaeologists have just found the world's oldest popcorn along the coast of Peru (and you thought it was that stuff flattened under your feet at the movies ).

This is not so much popcorn as cobs denuded of popcorn.

The cache includes a bunch of 6,700 year old cobs that have been clearly roasted in an oven or on coals.

But in their analysis of the ancient snack, the scientists failed to address the long-standing and contentious debate about what exactly is the right way to eat corn—snipping the cobs horizontally from stem to tip and then sliding typewriter fashion back to the beginning (I know, "What's a typewriter?"), or moving vertically around the cob. Some might like to throw in "people have always done it this way" in support of their side, but no, science lets us down once again.

We also have to assume, since the article didn't speak to this important point, that there were no excessively large clay beverage containers alongside the popcorn.

The report is also incomplete because the researchers apparently didn't even test for a trace of butter, margarine, or that oily crap that substitutes for butter in these modern days.

Salt? What about salt? And they call themselves scientists.

But at least there was no sign of petrified yeast, which only proves that putting a leavening agent on your popcorn is unnatural.