Some Still Do: Essays on Texas Customs Page: 55

                                
GEOPHAGY IN THIS
GENERATION
By Ava Bush
DURING the late winter and early spring of 1967, I observed an
activity while traveling Highway 287, between Grapeland and
Crockett (in Houston County) that left me wondering. People were
digging into the roadside embankment. At first sighting I thought that
they were looking for something lost, but as I continued to pass week-
ly, usually around four o'clock in the afternoon, the same scene was
repeated, and always the people were Blacks. I learned later that they
were digging clay to eat.
The next time I passed the clay bank I stopped and talked to a man
and woman who were digging there. They were not anxious to talk
about it, but they did say that they were collecting the hard dry
lumps for the woman to eat. The man claimed he didn't eat clay.
I later dug some clay from the embankment and had it chemically
analyzed. There was no mineral present in an amount sufficient to
meet any human dietary deficiency. I tested clay from other areas of
East Texas in order to compare physical and chemical properties and
arrived at the same results. All of it was also rather flavorless. My in-
terest in the subject increased when the school where I taught was
integrated and two of my black female students told me that they were
clay eaters.
Earth eating, or geophagy, is as old as man himself and records of
its occurrence are found all over the world. The Persians were the first
people known to follow the custom. Clay was available in Persian
bazaars in two forms: hard white lumps from the Sumerian area and a
grayish clay from the mountains of Malhallat. An analysis of fossilized
human excreta, or coprolites, excavated near the city of Jarmo, Iraq,
showed a high clay content, indicating that clay was a regular part of
the people's diet.
Mythology and art remnants reveal that man's earliest practices of

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