FROM RAW TO COOKED : PREHISTORY, MESOPOTAMIA, EGYPT, CHINA AND INDIA

  PREHISTORY

Animals don’t cook. The ability to use fire is one of the crucial things that separates us from them. Scientists used to think that humans were different from animals because we use tools and have language. Then we discovered that animals use tools and can communicate with each other and sometimes even with us, like Koko, the gorilla who learned sign language. As Stephen Pyne, the world’s leading authority on fire, points out, there may be “elements of combustion” on other planets, but so far, “We are uniquely fire creatures on a uniquely fire planet.”1

Humans Learn to Find Foods: Hunting and Gathering

Scientists believe that humans evolved for millions of years before they learned to use fire about 500,000 to one million years ago. The oldest fossils so far, excavated mainly in Africa, put the beginning of humanlike creatures—hominids—at between six and seven million years ago.2 From the jaws and teeth of these hominids, scientists deduce that they were primarily plant eaters—herbivores. Our back teeth, the molars, are flat like stones for grinding grain and plants and that is what we still use them for when we chew. Scientists think that over millions of years, early humans developed two survival advantages: (1) between 4 million and 1 million B.C., human brain size tripled, growing to what it is today, approximately 1,400 cubic centimeters; and (2) they stood upright on two feet—became bipedal—which allowed them to see farther and left their hands free to use weapons for protection and to kill animals for food. Food historians speculate that early humans learned to like the taste of meat from small animals that could be caught and killed easily, like lizards and tortoises, and from scavenging the leftover carcasses of large animals killed by other large animals.3

These early humans were hunter-gatherers, nomads who followed the food wherever it wandered or grew. Between 40,000 B.C. and 12,000 B.C., Asian peoples went east and crossed into North and South America. The Ice Age had dried up the seas, creating dry land between Asia and Alaska, making it possible to walk from one continent to the other. So, the first people in the Americas were Asians.

Work related to food was divided by gender. Men left the home to hunt animals by following them to where they went for food, especially salt. Women gathered fruits, nuts, berries, and grasses because their lives revolved around a cycle of pregnancy, birth, and child rearing.4 Gathering was more reliable than hunting. Becoming carnivores—meat eaters—probably helped humans survive, too. In case of a shortage of plants, there was an alternate food source. Now we were omnivores—we ate everything. We still have the front or canine teeth, sharp like a dog’s for tearing meat, to prove it. However, human teeth weren’t sharp enough to pierce animal hides. For that, something else was necessary—tools.

Scientists believe that humans invented tools about 1.9 million to 1.6 million years ago. Early humans butchered animal meat, even elephants, with blades made out of stone, which is why it is called the Stone Age (as opposed to the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, which came later). Archaeologists call these people Homo habilis—“handy man.” Then, approximately 1.5 million to 500,000 years ago, another group appeared called Homo erectus—”upright man.” These people migrated north to Europe and east to India, China, and Southeast Asia. They had better tools than any of the other groups. And for the first time, they had fire.

Humans Learn to Use Fire: Cooking versus Cuisine

Scientists speculate that lightning started a fire by accident, but humans figured out how to keep it going by appointing somebody keeper of the flame day and night, perhaps the first specialized job. For the first time, humans had a tremendous tool with which to control the environment. It kept night terrors and animals away. It was also sacred, “the only substance which humans can kill and revive at will.”5 The god who controlled lightning was usually the most powerful god in early religions. Most cultures have creation myths of how humans stole or were given fire by the gods and how they were punished and suffered for this divine knowledge. Fire completely transformed food from raw to cooked, which allowed humans to eat otherwise indigestible foods and made food preservation possible. Control of fire gave humans control of their food supply—a huge survival advantage.

Once humans had fire, how did cooking begin? Perhaps by accident, although anthropologists are still arguing about this. One theory is that an out-of-control fire burned down a hut and accidentally cooked some pigs. People wandered in, tried the cooked meat, and liked it. Another theory is that a forest fire first roasted meat; still others think that cooking was a more deliberate, controlled act by humans.6 In any case, now there were more options than raw bar and tartare.

It was cooking, but was it cuisine? Historian Michael Freeman’s definition of cuisine is “a self-conscious tradition of cooking and eating . . . with a set of attitudes about food and its place in the life of man.”7 So, cuisine requires not just a style of cooking, but an awareness about how the food is prepared and consumed. It must also involve a wide variety of ingredients, more than are locally available, and cooks and diners willing to experiment, which means they are not constricted by tradition. Since early humans were still eating to survive, and had no control over their food supply, it was not cuisine.

We might never know exactly how people mastered fire and started cooking their food, we only know when—between 500,000 and one million years ago. Roasting over an open fire was probably the first cooking method. Pit roasting—putting food in a pit with burning embers and covering it—might have come next. Then spit roasting, when hunters came home with the animal already on a spear and decided to cook it by hanging it over the fire and turning it. With sharp stone tools, meat could be cut into smaller pieces to make it cook faster. Food could be boiled in large mollusk or turtle shells where they were available, or even in animal skins,8 but pots were not invented until around 10,000 B.C. and there were no sturdy clay boiling pots until about 5000 B.C.9 Cooking in such vessels would probably have produced bacterial contamination, since there was no soap and no effective way to clean them. Finally, scientists believe that Homo sapiens—“wise man,” the direct ancestor of humans—appeared between one million and 100,000 years ago.

Humans Learn to Communicate: Dance, Speech, Art—Culture

Before language was invented, early humans spoke with actions. They danced, which dance historian Joan Cass defines as “the making of rhythmical steps and movements for their own sake (as against steps and movements done in order to go somewhere, to do work, or to dress oneself ).”10 They danced together in religious ceremonies to ensure fertility of humans and crops, for rain, for a successful hunt. If the dance produced the result they wanted, they kept doing it exactly the same way again and again, turning it into a ritual. Music was added—beans or small stones in a pouch shaken or rattled, animal bones with holes drilled in them like a flute, maybe an animal skin stretched over a cooking pot to make a drum.11 Then, about 100,000 years ago, we developed language. This, too, helped humans to survive. We could warn our tribe of danger, tell them where there was food, plan ahead and cooperate in work, name things and places, and generally organize the world, which is a step to controlling it.

Early art, too, was often communication connected to fertility and food. Small figures, women with exaggerated breasts and hips, were carved out of rock. Animals were painted on cave walls. A mask “changes your actual identity and merges you with the spirit that the mask represents.” 12 This is called sympathetic magic. As Sir James Frazer points out in The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, the principle at work is that “like produces like”: if you make a symbol of what you want, it will happen. The woman will have a child, the hunt will be successful, the animal your mask represents will be found. You have control over these things because you have, in a sense, created them.13 The animals most commonly represented in prehistoric cave paintings are horses, followed by bison, deer and reindeer, oxen, the ibex, then elephants and mammoths.14 So food, art, and religion have been connected since the earliest human times—at least in France.

Corpses, Middens, and Coprolites

How do archaeologists know what happened before written history? How accurate is the information? The same scientific tools like DNA and miccroscopic analysis that solve crimes today can solve ancient mysteries. Much of what we know about early humans comes from three sources: corpses, their preserved bodies; middens, their garbage piles; and coprolites, their fossilized feces. Bodies have been found all over the world, preserved by drying in hot climates, by freezing in cold climates, and by bogs in wet climates. Overdeveloped bones in the right forearm tell us that these people threw spears.15 Analyzing their intestinal tracts reveals what these people ate, and also that many of them had the same intestinal parasites that we still have today.16

From middens, archaeologists know that in some ways the eating habits of early humans were not that different from ours: they smashed or broke bones to get to the marrow, too. And they did it for the same reason—because they liked it, not because there was nothing else to eat.17 Today, this is called osso buco, Italian for “bone with a hole.” The difference is that early humans ate bone marrow with their hands while squatting around a fire, while osso buco is eaten with a silver marrow spoon in a fine restaurant. Many of the recipes in French master chef Escoffier’s cookbook Le Guide Culinaire have marrow as an ingredient, even sweet puddings like his Pouding à l’Américaine (#4438) and Pouding à la Moelle (#4439). Broken jaw bones and pierced skulls indicate that early humans savored the taste of animal tongues and brains. The shells of shellfish like mussels and limpets also survive in middens, telling us that humans ate these as far back as 60,000 to 120,000 years ago.18

From coprolites, we know what foods early humans ate because we can see what they excreted. Seeds, fibers, and other indigestible matter ended up in the coprolite. In this way, the human digestive tract was also part of the food chain, helping plants to spread. From these methods, we know that wild crab apples were consumed 750,000 years ago in Kazakhstan, just north of modern Afghanistan.

Dating the items found in corpses, middens, and coprolites is done by several methods. Carbon dating measures the amount of radioactive decay in a life form. Tree ring analysis—dendrochronology—can reveal what the climate was like and how much rainfall occurred at certain times. Analysis of pollens can also help decipher ancient dates.

THE ANCIENT AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION

The two most important factors that determine where life is hospitable to plants and animals, including humans, are geography and climate. When the Ice Age ended around 10,000 years ago, the last of the glaciers receded and the planet warmed up. This was the first of three major climate changes planet Earth has experienced. The other two were the Medieval Warm Period (A.D. 950–1300) followed by the Little Ice Age, which ended about 100 years ago. Some scientists think that we are in a new period of global warming caused by pollution from gasses produced by car engines and machinery (the “greenhouse effect”) and that we have to do something about it fast. Others think it is just part of a natural cycle. Still others think that climate is random and that a catastrophic change could occur suddenly for no reason and be completely out of the control of humans.

Humans Learn to Domesticate Foods: Sheep and Goats, Barley and Wheat

Gathering nuts and seeds and grasses and hunting wild game was unreliable, inefficient, and could support only a limited population. Humans wanted more control over their environment and a guaranteed supply of food, especially food they liked. So about 10,000 years ago, humans began to tame wild plants and animals. From the earliest times, food was bred to taste better, be hardier, and yield more—in other words, it was genetically modified. This was a time-consuming and difficult process, because all plants and animals have ways to defend themselves— husks and tusks, shells and spines. The first domesticated animals were sheep and goats, then pigs and cows.

After domestication came farming. Fire was a force here, too. Slashand-burn agriculture is one of the oldest and simplest ways to clear the land of trees. Once used extensively by primitive tribes, it is still used today in some places, like Borneo. The process: slash the bark on the tree, which stops the sap from flowing and eventually kills the tree. The leaves die and fall off, allowing sunlight to filter onto the forest floor where the fallen leaves decompose into fertilizer. Then crops are planted. In two or three years, when the soil starts to show signs of being depleted of nutrients, the dead trees are burned, the ash provides fertilizer, and more crops are planted. Unfortunately, this requires constantly moving into new areas and destroying the forests.

The first cultivated plants were barley, then wheat (Triticum) from wild grasses. There are about 30,000 varieties of wheat.19 Ancient wheats—emmer, spelt, einkorn—had several layers of protection, including a very hard inedible outer covering called chaff, which had to be roasted to be removed. Then friction had to be applied to the wheat to separate it from the chaff, a process called threshing. This was done by having oxen walk on the wheat, or by hitting it. The chaff was lighter than the wheat, so it could be blown or fanned away. Then the wheat had to be ground to make flour. This was done by hand until animals began to be used around 800 B.C. These flours were stone ground and coarse ground, and most likely still contained bits of chaff or fine particles of stone. The problem was that heating the wheat to remove the chaff killed what makes it rise—gluten. So the earliest breads were flat, more like crackers. Some examples that still exist are Indian chapati, flour and water baked on a hot griddle; poori, also flour and water, but quick fried; and Jewish matzo, which is baked. An important change occurred about 7000 B.C.: wheat with a weaker chaff began to be grown, so the roasting step could be skipped and the gluten was free to rise.20 Leavened bread was born, probably first in Egypt, and it was probably an accident. Settling down and farming allowed humans to have some foods it is impossible to have if you are a nomad. One of these is wine. It takes two years before vines bear fruit, and there is a very short time frame, just a few days, during which the grapes have to be picked and crushed—until recently, by stomping on them. Then they must be kept at a temperature that will allow them to ferment, and stored. It is impossible to wander around and to make wine, too. So, two of the earliest professions were growing vines and making wine.21

Did domestication occur only once or more than once in different places? Some plants like barley, lentils, and rice seem to have been domesticated in multiple places. There is also evidence that pigs were kept around 7000 B.C. in the city of Jericho in the Near East and thousands of miles away on the island of New Guinea in the South Pacific.22 Domestication altered some plants and animals so much that they became dependent on humans for reproduction. Maize, native to the Americas and what we call corn, is an example. The seeds, which are the kernels, no longer fall off by themselves, but have to be removed from the cob.

Salt: “White Gold”

One of the most valuable trade items from earliest times was salt. It is not a condiment like pepper or mustard or ketchup, but a mineral, NaCl, sodium chloride. Humans need it to live. Our nervous systems can’t function without it. Its prevalence shows in the many phrases connected with salt: a valuable person is the “salt of the earth,” which is how Christ referred to his apostles; a useless person is “not worth his salt.” One of the oldest ways of obtaining salt was by boiling or evaporating sea water. This was done in ancient Egypt; in ancient Gaul (the Romans’ name for France); in France in the eighteenth century, to avoid paying the salt tax; and in India in the twentieth century as a way to gain independence from England and the British salt monopoly. This is a very expensive and labor-intensive way to get salt compared to mining rock salt.

Currently in the United States, between two and three million tons of salt are mined each year from a mine that runs under the center of the United States, from Detroit and Cleveland south to Louisiana. This salt mountain is as big as Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain on earth. Only four percent of the salt that is mined is consumed; the other ninety-six percent is used to de-ice roads and by the chemical industry, which breaks it down into sodium and chloride. America also has the Great Salt Desert in Utah, and the Bonneville Salt Flats, where cars are test raced.

Fermented Beverages: Mead, Wine, Ale

Mead—fermented honey—was probably the first fermented drink, perhaps another food accident. Maybe honey was left out, rain fell, yeast settled on the mixture. In both Greece and Rome, before winemaking, mead was offered to the gods.25 Honey was a mysterious substance to ancient people. Greeks knew bees were connected to it, but not exactly how. Romans thought honey fell from heaven and landed on leaves, “the saliva of the stars.”26 Honey is produced from the nectar in flowers gathered by bees to feed young bees. Most of the water in the nectar evaporates, resulting in honey, which is thirty-five to forty percent fructose, thirty to thirty-five percent dextrose, seventeen to twenty percent water, and small amounts of enzymes, etc.27

Humans also started drinking wine very early. Maybe winemaking was done deliberately. Or perhaps wine was another culinary coincidence: grapes left at room temperature fermented naturally. Maybe crushed grapes and their juice left in the bottom of an animal skin fermented. Animal skins are all right for short-term transport of wine, but they aren’t an efficient way to store it. Pottery is, and by about 6000 B.C. clay jugs were being used. A clay jug with a narrow mouth can be stoppered up to prevent the oxidation that will turn wine to vinegar, while animal pouches can’t. It is from the wine residue, tartaric acid, in these clay vessels that we know how long ago humans were drinking wine.

From the beginning, wine was an upper-class drink. Beer was the beverage of the masses, and it, too, might have been the result of an accident. The housewives who were responsible for food preparation malted their grain—they let it sprout because it tasted better and it was easier to mill and bake into bread. Somehow, the malted grain fermented into an alcoholic beverage and began to be produced on its own, and women became the brewers.

The early human settlements were small villages, extended family groups organized like a tribe or clan of 200 to 300 people, with an elder male as the final authority in disputes. Perhaps he was also a sort of spiritual leader or medicine man. Nothing was written, no laws were needed, because everyone was in agreement about what was right and wrong, and everyone was engaged primarily in the same occupation—procuring and preparing food. People who had special skills like weaving, carving, or making baskets or pottery, would have done it after their duties connected to food were done. But that changed as the advantages of farming and domestication became apparent. The settlements became larger, the land was irrigated with complicated systems of canals that required organization and cooperation, and governments arose.

Advanced Civilization: Cooking Becomes Cuisine

An advanced civilization has all the elements that our civilizations have now: cities with thousands of people doing specialized labor, advanced technology, structure and institutions like government, and a way to keep records. These advanced civilizations were possible because there was a surplus of food, so not everyone had to farm all the time. Specialized labor became possible—like artisans, priests, warriors, chefs, teachers, and government officials to keep records of the population so they could collect taxes and raise an army. Advanced civilizations are where cooking for survival changes to cuisine—cooking with awareness, for a purpose other than just to make food edible.

Some historians think that cities were started for the purpose of worship. Could one feeble voice raised in prayer reach the gods? Thousands would have a better chance of being heard. For whatever reason they began, cities became centers of trade.

Humans need fresh water to survive, so it is not surprising that the earliest civilizations began around rivers: the Tigris and Euphrates in southwest Asia, the Nile in Egypt, the Yellow (Huang He) in China, and the Indus in India.28

Notes

1. Pyne, World Fire, 3.

2. LA Times, July 11, 2002, 1.

3. Brothwell, Food in Antiquity, 32.

4. Tannahill, Food in History, 32.

5. Klein and Edgar, Dawn of Human Culture,

156.

6. Flandrin and Montanari, Food, 17.

7. Ibid., 144.

8. Tannahill, Food in History, 15.

9. Achaya, Indian Food, 5.

10. Cass, Dancing Through History, ix.

11. Ibid., 3–8.

12. Ibid., 7.

13. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 21; cave art as sympathetic magic, 24. See also Janson, A Basic History of Art, 32–35.

14. Brothwell, Food in Antiquity, 19.

15. Achaya, Indian Food, 3.

16. Ibid., 202–203.

17. Ibid., 199.

18. Klein, The Dawn of Human Culture, 17.

19. McGee, On Food and Cooking, 234.

20. Ibid., 275.

21. Rod Phillips, A Short History of Wine, xvi.

22. Brothwell, Food in Antiquity, 194.

23. Woodier, Apple Cookbook, 1–2.

24. Courtwright, Forces of Habit, 9.

25. Brothwell, Food in Antiquity, 165.

26. McGee, On Food and Cooking, 370.

27. Davidson, Oxford Companion to Food, 384.

28. There was an early civilization around the Niger River in Africa, but there is little information.

Written by Linda Civitello in "Cuisine and Culture - A History of Food and People", John Wiley & Sons, USA, 2008, excerpts pp.1-9. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.