Alva
Bought-led Up
The most important things in humanity are water and expression, and the ingenuity of humans allowed us to make use of things around us to better access both.
Here the humble Calabash gourd came into play, first in Africa around 12000 years ago and then in a unique situation arriving in South America around 10,000 years ago.
Originally theorized to arrive in the Americas thanks to people bringing seeds across the Bering Strait, it was recently discovered that the plants ended up in the ocean and arrived on South American beaches outside of human intervention and took root.
This meant that not once but twice independently our ancestors found this fruit and recognized it for a utilitarian purpose rather than agricultural ones. It is currently believed to be the first plant we domesticated and was used formultiple things including water bottles (hence the nickname “Bottle Gourd”) and musical instruments.
It only fell out of widespread use with the invention of pottery, much like utilitarian pottery fell out of practice with the advents of glass blowing and plastic bottles.