Would a Botanist Write About a Circular Barbell?
No doubt almost any young person who decides to get a circular barbell does not plan to emulate a group of people in a different part of the world. Yet the practice of using a circular barbell did not originate in a modern and western country. The use of body piercing, including the use of the circular barbell, began among those people who felt that such adornments added a touch a beauty to the human countenance. Piercing barbells are not the strangest sort of object ever used for attracting members of the opposite sex. In some societies, an unmarried man or woman might chose to wear pointed sticks in his or her nose.
Before James Cook set out to sail around the world, he hired a botanist to travel with him. He wanted to have on board his ship someone who was an expert on various types of plants. He unknowingly chose a man who kept a most interesting log. The subjects of interest were not what one would expect. They did not represent the world of growing and flowering things.
Due to the subject matter in that botanist’s log, historians would have good reason to wonder if that botanist ever saw a native wearing a circular barbell. Those historians have already noted that Cook’s botanist seldom devoted large sections of his journal to words about the native foliage. Instead, he would offer details about an evening when he enjoyed the company of a native female.
Did that woman wear a circular barbell? Historians have yet to find evidence that she did. Still, other objects mentioned by Cook’s botanist encourage speculation that at least one person seen by Cook and his men wore a circular barbell. At one point in the botanist’s journal he talks about seeing traveling minstrels who created music with nose flutes.
Perhaps the natives who engaged in sports activities did not want to undergo any sort of barbell piercing. Perhaps that is why there is no mention of a circular barbell among the botanist’s notes on archery competitions and wrestling tournaments. Or perhaps the botanist sighted a native with a circular barbell at a time when he did not have access to pen and paper.
One thing has become crystal clear to the readers of the journal kept by Cook’s botanist. That botanist did not spend all of his time examining the flora that was growing in various parts of the world. Sometimes he devoted entire evenings to observations at a special feast. Sometimes he spent long stretches of time hidden under the thatched roof of a canoe. The botanist would occasionally need to hide from the father or older brother of a female companion.
Still the botanist wrote such descriptive accounts of his travels that one wonders whether he ever tried producing an autobiographical account of his life with James Cook. Biographies and autobiographies were quite popular at that time. An autobiography that offered a truly original story would have caught the interest of a publisher.
If Cook’s botanist had ever witnessed a barbell piercing, or if he had managed to speak with a native about use of the circular barbell, then he would have been able to write a very original autobiography. Perhaps someday some historian will uncover such a text. Perhaps someday the world will learn just how much Cook’s botanist knew about the history of the circular barbell.