On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 02:23:20 GMT, "Terry Ogletree" wrote:
My family is of Scottish descent. One of the rituals at pig/cow/goat
slaughtering time was that the men doing the slaughtering would slit the
throat of the animal to be slaughtered and then fill a cup with the fresh
warm blood flowing from the animal. They would toast the animal, toast the
spirits of the harvest and then drink the blood. This ritual was brought
over from Scotland (via Ireland - we're Scots-Irish) by my family and
practiced through the generations up through my paternal grandfather. My
mother said that my father did not practice this ritual but knowing my
grandfather/father relationship, I'm not so sure about that. They also used
to cook animal blood in with their oatmeal (blood pudding?) as a food
stretcher I was told. I've often wondered if this (and other pagan
practices) contributed to the iron overload genetic make up of some of those
from Celtic lines.

The geneticists are saying that it was a diet *low in iron* which caused
this mutation to persist. In other words, it was a pro-survival trait for
people who weren't getting much iron in their diets. Today, in America,
where we get far too much iron in our diets, it has become a problem
for people who have inherited this trait.

Gary