User:Soapymug/Calabash

The purpose of this sandbox is to review the Calabash wikipedia article and take notes on how it can be improved. This will also contain notes from research that I have done.

At this point I have reviewed an article in Nat Geo, skimmed the abstract of a peer reviewed article in PNAS talking about origin and migration of this African bottle gourd, looked at a peer reviewed article in Springer by the NY Botanical Garden about Calabash in Folk Medicine, and looked through the African Calabash Collection in the Kenya National Archives.

Review of Article:

In second paragraph of introduction: the article notes that the gourd originated in Asia and then was dispersed around the world, via human migration or by floating across the ocean. It also notes that it had existed in the New World before Columbus arrived.

Edits: Calabash is one of the first domesticated plants, and the only one that was globally dispersed and domesticated during Pre-Columbian times. Phylogenetic analysis of archaeological and living bottle gourds show that the gourd originated from Africa, and ocean current drift modeling shows that seeds could have been dispersed by floating African gourds to the New World Neotropics.

In the History section, the first paragraph says that it was first domesticated in Asia and then brought to Africa. The Kistler study says otherwise. Second to last paragraph says that how it arrived in the Americas is still a mystery- the Kistler article theorizes translantic drift. The last paragraph attempts to introduces the Kistler article that provides theory to counter the ones made, however is just a small paragraph compared in the 5 paragraph section.

Plagerizing?? The whole first paragraph is copied from [https://www.pnas.org/content/102/51/18315#:~:text=The%20bottle%20gourd%20has%20been%20recovered%20from%20archaeological%20contexts%20in,to%20ca.%208%2C000%E2%80%939%2C000%20B.P.&text=siceraria%20being%20independently%20brought%20under,4%2C000%20years%20later%2C%20in%20Africa. one research paper.]

In cultural section, Add under Africa For folk medicine. A paste of burned and powdered Calabash seed paste was used as a folk medicine to remedy snakebites South Africa.

In the paragraph " The mystery of the bottle gourd..." discussing how the gourd arrived in the Americas. Take out word is usually, change to is theorized