Another food source in times of drought is thistle, the one illustrated above by Rainey Miller is the Erath County variety, Texas Thistle, Cirsium texanum). This pant can grow to forty inches on bare, drought-blasted ground and even though it’s covered in yellow spines, the whole plant is edible. The seeds were eaten like sunflower seeds or ground into a flour, the artichoke-flavored taproot, and the trimmed and peeled stems and leaves were boiled. The nutrition level is pretty low but the plant has been a life-saver. Generations of reliance on these fiber-rich, low glycemic this mega-drought diet (including mesquite, Opuntia and yucca), that later generations would consider famine-foods developed in these early Texans a thrifty metabolism. Some of these plants were even insulin sources. Desert foods are rock-bottom on the glycemic index, at around 23, far below 55, the score beginning the low-glycemic zone. Over centuries the so-called “thrifty-genes” were locked in place and are driving the Native’s descendants toward obesity and diabetes when they collide with the Big Mac. Another dart point used during the last half of the Altithermal drought (8,000 – 5,000 BP), illustrated above by Jill Afford, is the Nolan (6,000 – 4,500 BP). These projectile points are sometimes roughly flaked and are easily recognized by their beveled stem.

Dan Young. Unpublished Manuscript, 2022.