The fruit of this tree is seldom used in western Europe, but, once upon a time, it may possibly have been commonly eaten farther east. According to Herodotus writing some 2,500 years ago, a strange race of men and women, all bald from birth, who live in what may possibly be the foothills of the Urals, pick the bean-sized fruits of a tree called 'pontic' to make a black juice from, and from the leftover lees of the fruit make a cake-like dish, this juice and cakes being the main sustenance of the bald peoples. According to A.D. Godley, a translator of the works of Herodotus published in the early 1920s, it is said that the Cossacks make a similar juice from Prunus padus, and call this juice a similar name as the bald men called their juice according to Scythian traders according to Herodotus.[7]