We Introduce Origin of Waterproof Rainboots to You Others
Perhaps the Indians roasted them like s'mores—rotating them ever so slowly to make sure every side got just dark enough, but not so long that they caught on fire. Or maybe they went all out, expediting the process and blowing out any flames. Of course,... morePerhaps the Indians roasted them like s'mores—rotating them ever so slowly to make sure every side got just dark enough, but not so long that they caught on fire. Or maybe they went all out, expediting the process and blowing out any flames. Of course, for the art of hovering a rubber-coated foot over a fire, one's pain tolerance may have ultimately determined how long the process went on.
From the Amazonian Indians' pain, modern society may have gained the Waterproof rainboots . That's the best guess, anyway, of experts who know their latex. "When the New World was discovered by Columbus and his followers, one of the first things they found was rubber," says Joe Jackson, author of The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire. "There were two things reported back: bouncing balls and boots."
Indians would go out and slice into the bark of a rubber tree, collecting the white latex sap in a process similar to tapping maple syrup, Jackson explains. Then they would turn to... less
