NASA is building a new Voyager spacecraft that will carry the best of modern human culture. What belongs onboard?
I would like to see a sampling of the best of every single culture's cuisine, that would probably be a logistical nightmare but I think that showing the epic diversity of humankind's response to its environment, the limits, our resourcefulness, the myriad expressions built upon and taken through opportunities, possibilities or lack thereof, is the finest way that we can show other lifeforms what it means to be a human.
Feeding ourselves goes beyond survival, it encompasses all of our disciplines, our passions, our likes and our dislikes, our religious beliefs, our fears, everything about us has a relationship to food.
I am sure that cultural anthropologists, forensic anthropologists and nutritional anthropologists would have a field day working alongside the more modern version of their counterparts and even though the challenge calls for modern human culture, you can't explain the present without understanding the past and I would want to inform others of the entirety of what being human means.
laurieanichols 