Food: A Culinary History

PART ONE

PREHISTORY and EARLY CIVILIZATIONS

INTRODUCTION

THE HUMANIZATION of EATING BEHAVIORS

Jean-Louis Flandrin

When and how did the eating behavior of human beings diverge from that of other animal species? Did humans distinguish themselves by the type or variety of foods they ate? By the fact that they prepared their food before eating it? By the ceremonial forms with which they surrounded the act of eating? Or by the conviviality of dining and its characteristic social forms?

Foods

Ancient Egyptian tombs from the fourth millennium B.C.E. show that the diet of the social elite already exhibited considerable variety. By the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty, the pharaoh and his substantial retinue were consuming an even greater diversity of pastries, meats, fish, dairy products, fruits, vegetables, and drinks. But what were ordinary people eating? On this point the sources are far less clear.

It is hard to say exactly when humans began to eat specific foods. Human beings were always omnivores: to one degree or another, they always ate both animals and vegetables. Even before the appearance of hominids, there were already omnivorous primates, so the omnivorous character of the human diet has no historical beginning.

For millions of years most of prehistoric man’s calories came to him in the form of a mixture of fruits, leaves, and grains. That the preponderance of man’s diet consisted of vegetable matter is suggested by the relatively small range of primitive bands and by certain characteristic wear patterns found in the teeth of humanoid remains. Yet anthropologists who have studied prehistoric man have written more about what he hunted and fished than about what plants he ate. This is partly because traces of vegetal foodstuffs are not as likely to be preserved in the soil. It is also because the chemical and isotopic techniques required to determine the proportions of animal and vegetable products in the prehistoric diet were developed only recently. These new techniques may also shed light on the types of plants eaten.

In recent decades there has been much debate about whether the first hominids—Australopithecus, Homo habilis, and later, about 1.5 million years ago, Homo erectus—were hunters or carrion eaters. Here it will be argued that man was an active hunter from the beginning, even if he also sometimes robbed other predators of their prey.

In the early Paleolithic period, especially in Europe, hunting and meat-eating took on increased importance. Opportunistic hunting, often of large animals such as bear, rhinoceros, and elephant, was the most common form in the middle Paleolithic period (200,000 to 40,000 B.C.E.). The later Paleolithic (40,000 to 10,000 B.C.E.) saw the development of more specialized forms of hunting involving herds of reindeer, horses, bison, aurochs, and mammoths, depending on the region and local resources.

In the Mesolithic period, as the European climate grew warmer, men were forced to hunt smaller animals such as deer, boar, fur-bearing carnivores, hares, birds, and even snails. Increasing amounts of time were devoted to fishing and gathering. Finally, with the agricultural revolution of the Neolithic period and the advent of the first civilizations, still less time was devoted to hunting, and greater emphasis was placed on rearing and slaughtering livestock of species that are still with us to this day: cows, sheep, goats, and pigs.

The transition to agriculture and husbandry occurred earliest in the Middle and Near East. These activities soon spread to other parts of the Mediterranean. Farther north, hunting and gathering continued to predominate into the Christian era, thus favoring a more balanced, less nutritionally deficient diet.

What types of plants did prehistoric man eat? Roots and tubers? Tender stalks? Leaves? Dry or juicy fruits? Cereals? More precise information would be welcome.

Broadly speaking, consumption of cereals began only after the rise of agriculture, and even then only in the great civilized societies—that is, those with cities, such as were found in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria, and Iran. In these places we hear of the consumption either of cereals in general or of specific species: first barley, then spelt and wheat and various foods and drinks prepared from these grains, including both leavened and unleavened bread, flatcakes, flatbreads, various kinds of biscuits, and beer.

But how are we to explain the inception of cereal agriculture if people had not already developed a taste for grains and a habit of consuming them? In fact, grains were cultivated in the wild, as has been demonstrated in the case of the Natufian culture, which flourished in the Near East between 12,000 and 10,000 B.C.E., and of Greece throughout the Mesolithic period. Cereals were probably consumed even earlier, since the wear patterns on the teeth of the first hominids, some two to three million years ago, show that they were grain eaters.

In the Mesolithic period humans in temperate zones shifted to a more diversified diet. Let us not be too hasty, however, to interpret this as a sign of progress. Indeed, some scholars see it as a response to the disappearance of the big game animals that abounded in Europe during the Ice Age. Thereafter, in order to round out their diet, men probably had to spend more time hunting small animals, such as the jerboa that was served at Mesopotamian banquets, or gathering wild plants, such as a lentil so small that it took a hundred thousand to make up a pound. By this standard, Esau appears to have been a true sybarite!

Another ambiguous transformation came about in the Neolithic era, but this time the response was quite different from that which had greeted the vanishing of the Paleolithic paradise. Agriculture and husbandry were, among other things, a kind of insurance against climatic changes. Sometimes, however, even this insurance was not adequate, as the biblical story of the seven famished cows in Egypt suggests. The problem was compounded by the fact that, while agriculture and husbandry allowed higher population densities than did hunting and gathering, they also appear to have encouraged natalist ideologies, which favored high birth rates and thus rapid population growth. This tended to increase infant mortality rates and made periodic famines more deadly than ever. In addition, farming, even in the rich, well-irrigated alluvial soil of Egypt and Mesopotamia, required harder labor than the great hunts of the late Paleolithic era. Finally, compared with the hunter-gatherers of Mesolithic Europe, the farmers and husbandmen of the Middle East ate a less varied diet whose nutritional deficiencies reduced their life expectancy.

Not only did nature supply different foods in different parts of the world, but people in every region picked and chose among the foods that nature offered. These choices reflected their different cultures. To this day, for example, Europeans eat no insects, yet people in Africa, South America, and Asia do. Within Europe, the French surprise and scandalize their neighbors by eating frogs and snails, while turtle soup has become an English specialty and haggis (made of the minced heart, lungs, and liver of sheep) a Scottish curiosity. Such differences are plainly cultural, since snails, frogs, turtles, and sheep are found throughout Europe. By the same token, animals prized by most Europeans are of course proscribed on religious grounds elsewhere: pork, eel, sturgeon, caviar, shellfish, and crustaceans are considered impure by Jews and Muslims, and Hindus are forbidden to eat the flesh of any animal. It would be interesting, therefore, to find out when human beings began to choose among the foods provided by nature and what rules guided their choice.

Although this aspect of food history is important and has justifiably attracted the attention of prehistorians, we here examine only one culture in detail: that of the ancient Hebrews. Despite the rigor of the analysis, we must warn against a possible misinterpretation of the results. The analysis is rigorous because it is based on the internal logic of Hebraic thought; the same method could equally well be applied to dietary restrictions in other cultures. The whole system of religious taboos is examined, whereas older hygienic theories of dietary restrictions overlooked many aspects. The methodology is therefore widely applicable. Yet it is misleading to treat the ancient Hebrews as a case apart and to examine their dietary practices only in terms of taboos. Even if the Hebrews attached greater importance to dietary restrictions than did other groups, and even if their choices in this respect defined their identity to an unusual degree, they were not as atypical as certain chapters in Part One and later might lead one to believe. Dietary choices are universal, but not all are justified on religious or hygienic grounds. Some are unconscious, and some are justified in other ways. Why, for instance, did the French reject the rutabaga after consuming so much of it during World War II, and why did the English give up flavoring their omelettes with tansy as they did in the Middle Ages?

Cooking

The earliest known recipes date from Mesopotamia in the second millennium B.C.E. It would be rash, however, to conclude that the Mesopotamians invented cooking. They simply had reasons to write down their recipes and were the first, along with the Egyptians, to possess the means to do so: without writing, recipes cannot survive. Yet the absence of written recipes does not rule out an interest in gastronomic matters or the existence of sophisticated culinary techniques. For example, the ancient Egyptians apparently felt no need to write down their recipes, yet we find instructive traces of their cooking methods in tombs dating from as early as the fourth millennium. Still, they did not invent cooking, either.

Some five hundred millennia ago, it appears, man achieved mastery of fire and began to diverge from the hominids, which remained wedded to an animal existence. Students of prehistoric man generally agree that fire was first used for cooking. Other uses appeared only much later. It would seem but a short step from this apparent fact to the statement that cooking made man some 500,000 years ago. Before we take that step, however, let us pause for a moment to consider the evidence for the transition from the raw to the cooked. What is cooking? How does an art of such importance come to be? Why did it develop?

Cooked meat is a natural byproduct of forest fires. In the wake of such fires, carnivores are thus able to sample the taste of cooked flesh. It is sometimes said that all flesh eaters prefer cooked meat to raw and would eat roasted meat every day if only they knew how to make a fire. The suggestion is that as soon as man came into possession of fire, his diet changed.

Let us not be too hasty to embrace this simplistic theory. Good and bad are not objective qualities; they vary from individual to individual and culture to culture. If any general rule holds, it is that what is known and familiar is generally preferred to what is unknown and unfamiliar. For a Japanese, the best way to serve fresh fish is raw. And at the beginning of the twentieth century, an Eskimo would have preferred raw and quite gamy seal meat to any of the boiled, roasted, or sauced versions that a French chef might have served up. Not all cultures share the age-old European aversion to raw meat and predilection for cooked. Hence one needs to be cautious about explaining the invention of cooking by invoking taste.

Furthermore, the fact that carnivores eat cooked meat after forest fires does not prove that they prefer it to raw meat. Meat on the hoof has to be caught before it can be eaten. Nor does the consumption of accidentally cooked meat prove that the carnivorous animals that do so are prepared to invest the time and energy required to achieve mastery of fire and learn how to cook.

Man domesticated fire some 500,000 years before the birth of Christ. This much seems well established. But it was not the overnight achievement of some ancient Prometheus. Long before man mastered fire, he may well have used it for cooking, as charred bones found at very ancient campsites suggest.

What is cooking? In the chapters that follow, we will learn of plants that are poisonous in their natural state but edible after preparation of some sort—for example, scalding in the case of certain types of mushroom, such as the gyromitra, or turban-tops. Some plants such as manioc require drying, marination, or extensive washing to eliminate bitter or toxic juices. And various types of preservation prevent foodstuffs from becoming toxic. Meat has been dried and smoked since the late Paleolithic period. Later preservation techniques include salting and the use of controlled fermentation to produce storable products such as beer, wine, cider, vinegar, cheeses, sauerkraut, pickles, nuoc mam (Vietnamese fish sauce), garum (used by the ancient Greeks), soy sauce, morri (an ancient Andalusian preparation), and so forth. Such preparations, which were originally intended not so much to enhance the taste of food as to preserve it or make it edible, may be included under the rubric cooking.

As we shall see, the initial purpose of heating, seasoning, marinating, grinding, slicing, filtering, and other cooking techniques was to make foods digestible and safe as much as, if not more than, to improve their taste. Taste, moreover, depended on culinary customs associated with specific cultural beliefs. The complexity of culinary techniques varied from culture to culture, but even the simplest is worthy of our attention.

Can we therefore say that cooking commenced when the first foods were roasted more than 500,000 years ago? Is that when the humanization of animal feeding behavior began? Perhaps, but let us not be too hasty to draw this conclusion. Certain techniques may have originated much earlier, even before the emergence of hominids.

Such, at any rate, is the conclusion suggested by one study of a small population of macaque monkeys on Koshima Island. Japanese primatologists one day observed a young female monkey soaking a sweet potato in a stream before eating it. At first this seemed unimportant. But the female in question developed a habit of soaking her potatoes, and other young macaques imitated her. As the young monkeys matured, they taught this behavior to their offspring. Meanwhile, the behavior itself evolved. Instead of dipping their potatoes in fresh water, as they had done initially, the monkeys came to prefer seawater. Indeed, the whole colony moved closer to the shore in order to facilitate this practice, and this colony of primates soon adopted new foods that they also took to soaking in seawater. Whatever the reason for their behavior, the monkeys were clearly engaged in a kind of culinary practice. Many such techniques may have been developed before the first men began to cook.

Conviviality

What differentiates human alimentary behavior from that of the animals? Culinary techniques, dietary restrictions, and religious rituals associated with eating are certainly part of the answer, but human dining is also believed to be a convivial social function.

Countless texts attest to the existence of banquet rituals as early as the beginning of the third millennium in Sumer and no later than the second millennium in other parts of Mesopotamia and in Syria. Although these texts mainly concern banquets involving gods and princes, they also describe the feasts of various less exalted individuals. Social eating and drinking already served to strengthen friendships and bolster ties between a lord and his vassals, dependents, servants, and even servants of servants. Farther down on the social ladder, merchants sealed bargains by sharing a drink.

In the same period the practice emerged of serving a round of daily meals in the temples of the gods: the large morning meal, the small morning meal, the large evening meal, and the small evening meal. Men did not eat on as strict a schedule as the gods, nor did they eat as often: there was a small morning meal and a large evening meal. Banquets were also held in the evening.

At Mesopotamian banquets certain foods, condiments, and beverages appear to have been indispensable, and one finds most of the same ingredients at the festive meals of other peoples later on. These included fresh meat, perhaps of a sheep, lamb, deer, or fowl. And then there was that amazing jerboa that served ten thousand people at the palace of Assurbanipal in Kalhu. Or it might be an ordinary goat, as in the fable of the poor man of Nippur. In any case, fresh meat seems to have been an essential ingredient of any Mesopotamian banquet, as it would be of banquets in other times and places.

Also essential were fermented beverages such as barley beer, ale, and liquor made from fermented dates, wine, and the like. Such drinks were perhaps even more typical of festive and convivial occasions. Salt was also shared as a symbol of friendship. Oil is mentioned as a part of every banquet: it was used not to flavor dishes but to anoint the guests’ hair. For this purpose it was often perfumed, hence even more precious. Oil thus served a cosmetic function, analogous to that of the water with which diners washed their hands before and after eating.

Other foods whose festive character is less apparent were also consumed: fish, eggs, fruits, vegetables, pastries embellished with fruits or sweetened with honey, flatcakes, and barley bread. At some banquets grains were eaten, either in the kernel or ground into flour but unbaked; these were extolled as extraordinary sources of nourishment. To us this seems odd: in ancient Mesopotamia the agricultural revolution was not yet ancient enough for cereals to have lost their sacred status and become a staple of commoners.

There were also banquets in Egypt as long ago as the Old Kingdom. Here we read of changes in the dinner table, seating, utensils, and the posture of guests at table. In Egypt, as in Mesopotamia, a precise dining ritual and strict etiquette were prescribed, at least for gods and kings.

Did the social function of the banquet originate in the third millennium with the advent of agriculture and husbandry and the concomitant rise of great empires in the East? Probably not. We do not know whether agriculture and husbandry predated alcoholic beverages such as beer, wine, and fruit-based liquors, which played such an important role in festive dining. Mongol horse breeders even drank a liquor made from fermented mare’s milk. Nevertheless, archaeologists have shown that beer existed in Iran in the sixth century B.C.E. Feasting may well have been possible even without intoxicating liquors. Finally, it seems likely, though it has yet to be proven, that hallucinogenic plants were used to foster conviviality well before the invention of fermented beverages. Some interpreters of late Paleolithic painting hold that certain images depict visions induced by such plants.

In any case, in the late Paleolithic, groups of families began working together to drive large animals into traps. This form of social organization required a division of the spoils among the several families that participated in the hunt. Very likely there was a division of labor as well. At certain times—after a hunt, for instance—the families probably gathered for a large festive meal at which they consumed part of the fresh kill. Going even farther back in time, to around 500,000 B.C.E. when man first began to cook with fire on a daily basis, the use of a common fire probably encouraged common dining, hence the social function of dining and the development of conviviality.

Does this suggest that meals were not taken in common until food began to be cooked? There is reason to doubt this. Although one should be wary of anthropomorphic interpretations of animal behavior, it is hard to avoid feeling that animals often take pleasure in eating together. Their cooperation in the kill is not incompatible with a hierarchical division of the spoils, a system of priorities, even a kind of etiquette appropriate to an animal society. Nothing similar is observed in the behavior of herbivores. Even before man appeared on the scene, did feasting originate with the division of freshly killed meat?

CHAPTER 1

FEEDING STRATEGIES in PREHISTORIC TIMES

Catherine Perlès

Even if apes were more omnivorous than is generally believed, man would remain unique among primates for the diversity of his diet. Among the factors contributing to the distinctiveness of human alimentary behavior are the variety and complexity of the underlying economy and the highly socialized, not to say ritualized, nature of human feeding.

The study of prehistoric man’s alimentary behavior and its gradual transformation should therefore be an important topic. Despite this importance, however, the current state of research leaves students of prehistory in a paradoxical situation: while we are capable of discussing the fabrication of, say, stone tools in minute detail, the best we can do when it comes to the history of eating is to propose a sketchy and still largely hypothetical portrait.

Chemistry and Prehistory

Some day, perhaps, chemical analysis of fossilized bones will make a full history of the prehistoric diet possible. Bony tissue contains dietary markers such as trace elements and carbon isotope ratios.¹ At the present time, however, these advanced methods are mostly still in the experimental stage. There are formidable technical problems to overcome, because many factors can alter the chemical composition of bones after burial. Despite these difficulties, promising results have already been obtained, particularly in regard to fairly recent prehistoric populations. For example, studies of certain North American tribes have demonstrated a regular seasonal alternation between food drawn from the land and food drawn from the water. By contrast, in studies of Danish tribes of the Mesolithic era, no such complementary seasonal cycles have been found to differentiate coastal from inland sites. Apparently the two types of sites were occupied by different groups: fishermen in the one case, hunters in the other. Elsewhere, among agricultural populations, investigators have pointed to the existence of dietary differences between individuals of different social status.

Because of the many technical issues yet to be resolved, these results must be regarded as preliminary. Hence chemical analysis of bones, although an exciting avenue of future investigation, is still a long way from providing us with a complete picture of the prehistoric diet. If we want to trace the history of human eating back to the beginning, we must for the time being rely on traditional archaeological methods, with all their well-known shortcomings.

Those methods are particularly problematic when it comes to the study of diet, since plant matter, like all organic substances, decays in the soil. It is virtually certain, however, that primitive man derived most of his calories from plants, except in extreme latitudes, where the environment was quite special.² Indeed, although man, like other primates, is omnivorous, the symbolic importance attached to meat does not reflect its actual nutritional importance. Much of this essay is concerned with meat consumption, but this has to do more with the survival of vestiges of that activity than with its actual importance in the prehistoric diet. But this emphasis also stems, in my view, from the fact that prehistorians themselves wittingly or unwittingly ascribe too much importance to meat-eating in their various theories of hominization.

The First Hominids: Fierce Hunters or Carcass Snatchers?

To this day, meat, especially meat obtained by hunting wild animals, enjoys a symbolic importance out of all proportion to its place in the human diet. This no doubt accounts for the decisive role traditionally ascribed to hunting in theories of hominization from antiquity to the present.³ And it probably also explains the hyperbole in recent efforts to refute such theories by showing that the first hominids were scavengers.

In deposits left by the first hominids (Australopithecus and Homo habilis) in East Africa some 1.5 to 2.5 million years ago, we find substantial numbers of animal bone fragments together with primitive stone implements. The richest sites, located beside lakes and rivers, contain the remains of animals ranging in size from turtles to elephants along with hundreds of chips left from the cutting of stone tools. On the basis of such evidence, these hominids were long considered to be the first primate hunters. By definition they were also permanent bipeds. But bipeds are not particularly well adapted for hunting, particularly when the absence of any long-range projectile weapon made it impossible to hunt from ambush. It was therefore assumed that the males of these species must have cooperated in the hunt.⁴ Since the remains of the prey were gathered together at certain sites, these were held to be campsites and adduced as evidence for mutual assistance and complementarity between males and females.⁵

Some four to five million years ago, the story goes, diminished rainfall in East Africa reduced the extent of jungle and expanded the savanna, depriving man’s ancestors of many plant resources and forcing them to adapt by eating more meat, which required them to band together in organized hunts. This organized hunting led in turn to improvements in communication skills and intellectual faculties and to a gendered division of labor. In other words, the type of social and family organization regarded as typically human allegedly originated with hunting.⁶ It was therefore ostensibly because Australopithecus became a hunter that he developed human characteristics.

What kind of hypothesis is this? Is it a historical fact or what some ironically call a scenario, nothing more than a reflection of our own preconceptions? In fact, this reconstruction of the prehistoric past is based on reasoning by analogy.

An American prehistorian, L. Binford, was the first to ask what proof there was that the animal bones and stone implements were left by the same individuals.⁷ Perhaps the animal remains were left by wild carnivores and the tools by hominids. After more than a decade of debate, most scholars, particularly in the United States, accept Binford’s hypothesis that hyenas gathered most of the carcasses and the hominids arrived to pick over the remains only after the predators were sated. Others, however, hold that the first hominids were sufficiently well organized to snatch freshly killed prey, with considerable meat still left on the bones, and carry it off to sites where stone tools were cached.⁸

In my view, although research in recent years has yielded solid results, the interpretation of those results suffers from methodological errors and is just as prone to ideological bias as the previous interpretation.⁹ A broader view precludes seeing our earliest ancestors as miserable scavengers incapable of killing on their own the animals they ate.

Toward a Rehabilitation of the Early Hominids

In order to avoid circular reasoning, one must distinguish two questions. First, who brought the carcasses to the sites where they were deposited? And, second, how were those carcasses obtained?

The fact that animal remains are found together with stone tools and chips is one whose importance should not be underestimated. It is difficult to explain the abundance of both tools and chips if the sites in question were merely the lairs of hyenas picked over by hominids in search of leftover meat and marrow. Carnivores, moreover, do not normally amass bones out in the open. When they tear a carcass apart, they systematically disperse its parts. If they have young to feed, they take portions of the dead animal back to their dens. Thus dispersion is followed by selective accumulation.

When bones are amassed out in the open, therefore, there has to be some reason to explain why the same site was repeatedly reused. At first glance, nothing in the setting (by the side of a lake or river) accounts for this reuse, which is unusual for animal predators but typical of later human hunters. Potts’ hypothesis that the presence of tools accounts for the reuse of these sites explains both their character and location. If Potts is correct, most of the carcasses must have been brought to these places by the hominids themselves rather than by hyenas.

Second, analysis of what portions of carcasses are present on the site unambiguously demonstrates that no secondary scavenging was involved. One systematically finds the richest meat-bearing portions (leg, shoulder, etc.). The hominids therefore must have had access to freshly killed animals and not to what was left over after other carnivores had eaten their fill. Indeed, this rehabilitation of the early hominids has met with unexpected corroboration in the form of recent findings concerning the behavior of chimpanzees in the wild. Some are skillful hunters: in certain seasons male chimps will hunt smaller monkeys and other prey and eat up to 200 grams of meat per day.¹⁰

Consequently, it seems difficult to deny that the first hominids were predators in the broad sense. Still, animal protein was probably just a complement to a diet based mainly on plants. There are two kinds of evidence for this assertion: the wear patterns found on the teeth of early hominids, which indicate a plant-based diet, and the range of territory in which they operated. From this we conclude that Homo habilis was an opportunistic omnivore.

The Development of Diversified Hunting

There is no evidence that this alimentary strategy was significantly modified in Africa over the next several hundred thousand years. When Homo erectus replaced Homo habilis some 1.5 million years ago, the density of animal remains that we find at surviving sites actually tended to decrease. The bones are also more fractured, which suggests a more intensive consumption of marrow.

By contrast, when Homo erectus began to establish himself in more temperate regions, the greater seasonal contrasts and corresponding decrease in plant resources must have led to a greater, though by no means exclusive, nutritional role for meat. In Europe throughout the Paleolithic period we find archaeological evidence for a diversified meat diet, which very early came to depend on an ability to kill large animals.

The variety of animals consumed and the distribution of their ages suggests that hunters went after isolated animals rather than attacking entire herds en masse. Small groups of hunters made regular (though not necessarily daily) forays in search of whatever game they could find. But diversified hunting does not mean random hunting. All hunters observe potential prey even when they are not hunting. On every expedition decisions had to be made: for example, whether to follow the tracks of the first small game encountered or hold out for meatier prey or for something easier to capture. Obviously such choices depended on the day and the season, on experience with previous hunts, on the availability of stored meat, and on the group’s knowledge of the abundance of game in the area and of plant resources at that time of year.¹¹

Gathering plants was in fact an integral part of hominid alimentary strategies. Because few traces of vegetal foodstuffs have survived, it is difficult to evaluate their consumption either qualitatively or quantitatively. It is nevertheless fair to assume that plants were important both nutritionally and economically, particularly after the domestication of fire opened up a whole new range of resources, namely, plants that, while toxic in their raw state, could be consumed after cooking.¹²

It was some 500,000 years ago that regular domestic use of fire began to have a profound effect on the hominid diet and doubtless on social behavior related to eating as well. Many carnivores have a taste for cooked meat (a natural by-product of forest fires). Yet only man had the ability to eat cooked meat regularly and thus to move from feeding to cooking and ultimately to a whole range of culinary techniques. It is striking to observe that the earliest traces of cooking are contemporary with the earliest vestiges of campfires.¹³ Charred bones have been found apart from the remains of the fire itself, indicating that the bones once held grilled meat and were not simply parts of animal carcasses used as fuel. Although grilling was sporadic more than 500,000 years ago, it became common once fire was truly domesticated.

The social impact of cooking was no doubt more immediately apparent than were its nutritional implications. It encouraged commensalism, or eating with others, and led to greater division of labor within the group, all of whose members participated in a regular round of activities associated with eating. The result was a more complex group organization.

Specialized Hunting in the Late Paleolithic Period

Toward the end of the middle Paleolithic era we detect the first signs of organized hunting, as individual animals began to be separated from herds by the concerted efforts of groups of hunters. Systems of subsistence based on the exploitation of a selected species of animal became commonplace. Among the species hunted in this fashion in one region or another were reindeer, horses, bison, aurochs, and even mammoths. This new type of hunting called for a socioeconomic structure and range of techniques quite different from those associated with opportunistic hunting. Its economic objectives were also different.

Opportunistic hunting had involved individuals or small groups and required little preparation other than daily maintenance of weapons. Many kinds of weapons and tools were needed to kill and prepare the diverse prey. By contrast, driving herd animals into pits took large numbers of people (often including women and children), usually drawn from groups of families residing separately for much of the year. These periodic assemblies for the hunt suggest that there must have been some means of spreading information and some form of social integration or expanded social structure extending beyond the domestic or residential unit. Hunting herd animals (often migratory) in this way required extensive preparation: pits had to be dug, and large numbers of specialized weapons had to be assembled, along with tools for slaughtering, butchering, and treating hides. In compensation for all this preliminary effort, the hunt could be expected to yield considerable quantities of meat, lard, marrow, hide, sinew, and hair. These reserves of food and materiel might be sufficient for several weeks or months. Hence this type of hunting was more demanding socially and technically as well as more risky (if no animals were captured) but more rewarding if successful. Broadly speaking, it was in areas that practiced this form of hunting that Paleolithic art also developed: sanctuaries, movable objects, and embellishments and ornaments of various kinds. This art, incorporated into communal rituals, no doubt encouraged integration and collaboration. But the art itself was in turn encouraged by the stockpiling of food reserves, which allowed groups to stay put for extended periods.

Collaborative hunting also implied a need to preserve meat after slaughter. The cold, dry climate of the late Paleolithic made this task easier. Meat was dried, smoked, or frozen in pits dug in the earth (in this preglacial climate the subsoil was permanently frozen). Such pits, covered with mammoth tusks, have been found in central and eastern Europe. Elsewhere, whole carcasses, weighted down with stones, were deposited in lakes that froze over in winter, thus preserving the meat.

Stored meats and other foods could be eaten either dry or boiled. Water was boiled either by tossing heated rocks into vessels of wood, bark, or hide, vestiges of which have been found near campfires, or by heating it directly over the fire in animal bellies or skins. Large pieces of meat were also grilled on spits. Traces of spits made of bone have survived. Smaller pieces could be grilled directly on the stones used to line hearths in this period.¹⁴

The late Paleolithic—a time when primitive man fished for salmon, captured birds, hunted animals in large groups, and developed the ability to depict his prey in art—in many respects marks the apogee of the hunter-gatherer way of life.

Diversity of Diet in the European Mesolithic

As the glaciers began to recede some 8,000 years before the birth of Christ, a moist, temperate climate returned to the middle latitudes of Europe. Tundra, steppes, and prairies gradually gave way to forest. The larger meat-bearing animals were supplanted by smaller prey more difficult to hunt in the dense forest. But other resources became more abundant: not only plants but also fish, mollusks, and birds. The Mesolithic diet was much more diverse than that of the late Paleolithic. Dozens of species from a variety of biotopes could be exploited from a single site. Nevertheless, we must be careful not to confuse diversity with abundance.

If deer, boar, and roe deer had been truly abundant, would Mesolithic man have added rabbit, birds, and snails to his diet? If a few plant species had supplied all of his energy needs, would he have scoured the area around his campsite for fruits, vegetables, and nuts? The very mobility of certain Mesolithic groups, which settled briefly in an area to exploit its resources before moving on, suggests conditions well short of abundance.

Farther north, in game-rich forests close to the sea or to rivers and lakes filled with fish and attractive to migratory birds, we do find traces of more permanent dwelling sites. Here abundant seasonal resources sustained life and made it possible to accumulate reserves. Hence although the Mesolithic tribes living along the Mediterranean were quick to learn agricultural and husbandry techniques imported by immigrants from the Near East, their northern cousins clung for a much longer time to their ancestral ways, even as they began to trade with the sedentary peoples to the south, exchanging fish, game, and gathered plants for ceramics, the meat of domestic animals, and polished stone tools.

Agriculture and Husbandry: Liberation or New Problems?

Although wild cereals had been harvested earlier, it is not until the Neolithic period that we see, first in the Near and Middle East and later in Europe, the beginnings of the economic revolution that became the basis for the traditional European diet. This revolution consisted in the cultivation of cereal crops (especially wheat and rye) and the raising of livestock, especially sheep, goats, cows, and pigs. It was at this time that wheat was first used to make both leavened and unleavened bread. The number of millstones that have been found and the care taken with them inside the dwelling indicate just how important a staple grain was from the outset.

There is a tendency, however, to overestimate the benefits of the ensuing dietary transformation. Because all the major western civilizations were founded on foods domesticated in this period, we are apt to view it through rose-colored lenses. In the temperate and northern parts of Europe, cereals and meat from domestic animals were still supplemented by resources from the wild, with the result that people in those parts of the world enjoyed an ample, balanced diet. By contrast, in Mediterranean Europe and the Near and Middle East, little use was made of wild plants or animals. In the early stages of the transition to the Neolithic, in fact, those potential sources of food appear to have been deliberately abandoned, perhaps for ideological reasons: turning his back on the wild, man concentrated on the domestic. The bulk of his diet consisted of cereals, legumes, beef, and mutton. Overreliance on cereals probably had negative effects on health. Dietary deficiencies were probably not the only cause of poor health, however. The growing density of sedentary populations created a propitious environment for epidemics.

Many scholars believe that a second dietary revolution followed close on the heels of the first: this involved the use of earthenware pottery, which allegedly made it possible to cook food in boiling water. Porridge made from various grains became popular as a result. Undue nutritional and dietetic importance has been ascribed to this innovation, however. For one thing, pottery was by no means indispensable for boiling food. As we saw earlier, this method of cooking was already practiced in the Paleolithic era. For another, it now appears certain that in several parts of the world the first ceramics were seldom used for cooking (this is true of Greece and Pakistan, for example). Pottery was used as cookware by these same peoples, but for several centuries they continued to prefer such traditional cooking methods as grilling, baking on heated slabs, or braising in a pit filled with heated stones. Meanwhile, innovations were made in the use of fire: raised hearths were constructed in dwellings and the first closed ovens (similar to traditional bread ovens) were built. Thus pottage (in the etymological sense, meaning food cooked in an earthenware pot) did not catch on quickly everywhere. It may have taken hold sooner in colder areas, where it was nutritionally important to preserve fat in the diet, but this remains to be proven. Ceramic containers were in any case used for preparing and storing fermented drinks, which were probably drunk on festive and ritual occasions.

Symbolism and the Origin of Cooking

Various technical and economic developments of the Paleolithic period made for a variety of new methods of preparing and preserving food. Many foods were available to satisfy man’s dietetic requirements, and it is likely that cultural preferences, or tastes transmitted from generation to generation, made their appearance at this early stage. Thanks to more numerous and better-preserved artifacts from the Neolithic period, we can be certain that cultural preferences existed by then. Accordingly, it is significant that in Europe hunting regained importance toward the end of the Neolithic. The prey was symbolically significant—the deer—and the renewed interest in hunting coincides with the first evidence of social inequalities and the emergence of elites. The fact that the deer was not domesticated was a true social and cultural choice, and the transfer of wild deer outside of their native habitat confirms the ideological importance attached to the wild.¹⁵

Eating, which was at first a response to individual needs, thus gradually became a key element of group structure, a mark of identity, and a symbolic means of expressing thought. Evidence exists of complex culinary creations in the great empires of the Middle East.¹⁶ These impressive states no doubt provided work for a new type of specialist: the cook. By contrast, there is little evidence of culinary sophistication or elaborate cookery in hunter-gatherer societies: preparations were simple, and the use of direct cooking (either by grilling meat or heating it on coals) made it difficult to mix ingredients to achieve new flavors. Menus were quite monotonous.

By contrast, we do find a number of hunter-gatherer societies that were quite adept at combining various substances for the purposes of healing and working magic. These preparations possessed certain features of true culinary art: they were complex combinations of ingredients for other than strictly nutritional purposes. I am therefore tempted to view these practices as forerunners of the more sophisticated culinary techniques that seek to achieve new flavors by means other than mere cooking. The consumption of fermented beverages probably also originated in rituals of one kind or another.

NOTES

1.  For example, the strontium/calcium ratio normally decreases with increasing meat consumption, while the ratio of carbon-13 to carbon-12 can indicate what types of plants were eaten. See, for example, E. Wing and A. Brown, Paleonutrition: Method and Theory in Prehistoric Foodways (New York: Academic Press, 1979).

2.  This accounts for the interest in measuring the strontium/calcium and carbon-12/carbon-13 ratios in order to determine the proportion of animal and vegetable matter in the diet.

3.  W. Stoczkowski, Anthropologie naïve, anthropologie savante: De l’origine de l’homme, de l’imaginaire et des idées reçues (Paris: Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, 1994) p. 215.

4.  R. Ardrey, The Hunting Hypothesis (New York: Atheneum, 1976).

5.  G. L. Isaac, The Food-Sharing Behaviour of Proto-Human Hominids, Scientific American 238 (1978): 90–108.

6.  G. Mendel, La Chasse structurale (Paris: Payot, 1977).

7.  L. Binford, Bones, Ancient Men, and Modern Myths (London: Academic Press, 1981).

8.  R. Potts, Early Hominid Activities at Olduvai, Foundations of Human Behavior (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1988).

9.  For instance: (1) conflation of two distinct questions, namely, who assembled the carcasses and how were they obtained?; (2) the use, by Binford and others, of so-called residual analysis, where only remains different from what carnivores normally leave in their own lairs (the residue) are attributed to the activity of hominids; from this choice it follows that the hominid cannot be seen as a hunter, because everything characteristic of the behavior of hunters (selection of prey, choice of the portions of the carcass containing the most meat or easiest to dismember, etc.) is automatically attributed to the carnivores; (3) contrary to the views expressed by R. J. Blumenschine in Carcass Consumption Sequences and the Archaeological Distinction of Scavenging and Hunting, Journal of Human Evolution 15 (1986): 639–59, and in Early Hominid Scavenging Opportunities, International Series 283 (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1986), interpretations based in part on analysis of carcasses found at excavation sites do not distinguish between hunters and scavengers but between rapid access to the carcass (whether by hunting or theft of fresh kill) and delayed access (secondary scavenging). Rapid access leads to consumption of the best meat, while the poorer leftovers go to the latecomers. But for an exception to the ideological bias that often characterizes the method, see Potts, Early Hominid Activities.

10.  C. Boesch and E. Boesch, Hunting Behavior of Wild Chimpanzees in the Tai National Parks, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 78 (1989): 547–73; G. Telecki, The Predatory Behavior of Wild Chimpanzees (Lewisburg, Penn.: Bucknell University Press, 1973).

11.  S. J. Mithen, Thoughtful Foragers: A Study in Prehistoric Decision Making (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

12.  A. B. Stahl, Hominid Dietary Selection before Fire, Current Anthropology 25 (1984): 151–68; Stahl, Plant-Food Processing: Implications for Dietary Quality, in Foraging and Farming: The Evolution of Plant Exploitation, ed. D. R. Harris and G. C. Hillman (London: Unwin-Hyman, 1989), pp. 171–93.

13.  C. Perlès, Préhistoire du feu (Paris: Masson, 1977).

14.  Ibid.

15.  Although deer are easy to domesticate, untamed deer straight from the wild were transported by boat to islands where previously there had been no deer. See J.-D. Vigne, Domestication ou appropriation pour la chasse: Histoire d’un choix socioculturel depuis le Néolithique, in Exploitation des animaux sauvages à travers le temps, XIIIe Rencontres Internationales d’Archéologie et d’Histoire d’Antibes, IVe Colloque International de l’Homme et l’Animal, October 15–17, 1992 (Juan-les-Pins, France: Editions Association pour la Promotion et la Diffusion des Connaissances Archeologiques, 1993), pp. 201–20.

16.  J. Bottéro, Le plus vieux festin du monde, L’Histoire 85 (1986): 58–65; Bottéro, La plus vieille cuisine du monde, L’Histoire 187 (1995): 80–85.

CHAPTER 2

THE SOCIAL FUNCTION of BANQUETS in the EARLIEST CIVILIZATIONS

Francis Joannes

For the Mesopotamians, the society of the gods resembled human society in many ways. We find the clearest demonstration of this parallel in descriptions of banquets attended by the gods. Important decisions were taken at assemblies of the principal deities, assemblies often marked by banquets. One of the primary symbols of the gods’ solidarity, these banquets illustrate the human conception of the pleasures of divine life.

When a god from one city visited another, a welcoming dinner was sometimes held. For example, when the goddess Inanna was invited to Eridu, the home of the god Enki, she was welcomed by the city’s vizir, who invited her to sample fresh water, cream, and beer. Later, after sharing many cups of wine with Enki, Inanna took advantage of the god’s drunkenness to spirit away certain symbols of his power, which she took with her to her own city, Uruk. Divine banquets were also held to celebrate important victories and other great enterprises. The god Marduk, for example, invited the other gods to dine with him after he tamed the sea and founded Babylon.

Private Banquets

THE PLEASURE OF SHARED MEALS Any formal agreement by a group of individuals, especially individuals of the same family, was apt to be sealed by a shared meal. The dinner symbolized the accord, and the sharing of food and drink was the material counterpart of the written contract. Partaking of the same food and drink bound the participants, and in documents from the beginning of the second millennium we find this formula: Bread was eaten, beer was drunk, and bodies were anointed with oil.¹ This practice was commonly associated with contracts for the sale of land, over which families frequently enjoyed certain rights. Following the same custom as the gods, the eldest son of the family had the honor of offering guests water to rinse their hands and then of serving them food and drink.

Banquets also sealed contracts to farm a piece of land or hire a boat. Above all they marked weddings. For all these occasions precise rules governed the exchange and sharing of food. To conclude a marriage in Assyria in the late second millennium, it was enough to anoint the head of a marriageable woman and organize a wedding banquet in her honor.

When people—from the highest court officials to the humblest of farmers—drank from the same cup, a kind of fraternity was established.² Sharing salt also symbolized a bond between individuals. In the neo-Assyrian period, the phrase amelu sa tabtiya (man of my salt) denoted a friend, a person with whom one shared this highly symbolic condiment. A refusal to share one’s food was sometimes interpreted as a mark of hostility. Failure to treat a guest politely was a notorious mark of disrespect. The sharing of food mattered more than the ingredients of the meal, since these were of the most basic sort.

THE PLEASURES OF THE INN For less formal occasions people liked to go to places where they could eat and, above all, drink with others. I will use the term inn to refer to places of this sort, which could be found in every Mesopotamian town at least as far back as the second millennium. Here visitors found food to eat and were often joined by local residents. The guests were mainly men, but inns were frequently run by women. The most famous such innkeeper is Siduri, who appears in the epic of Gilgamesh. Her inn marks the limit of the civilized world: beyond it, Gilgamesh enters unknown, almost mythic, territory. As an innkeeper, Siduri has a profound knowledge of human nature, and her discussions with Gilgamesh reveal a down-to-earth philosophy of daily life based on a certain number of fundamental principles.

The Royal Banquet

Most of our figurative as well as textual sources concerning banquets and other aspects of early civilization pertain to the royal government. Hence we know a fair amount about why Mesopotamian kings gave banquets and what they were like. Generally speaking, the sovereign invited guests to his dinner table to help him celebrate some important event: the inauguration of a palace or temple, a military victory, the arrival of a foreign delegation. Such occasions were simply glorified versions of various customary practices. The king was obliged to feed and otherwise compensate people who worked for him, whether in building prestigious monuments or winning battles. He had to welcome the representatives of other kings in a manner befitting his powerful status. And his relationship with the gods, one of the underpinnings of royal ideology, had to be maintained with regular feasts in their honor. The sumptuousness of these royal banquets varied, but they were always a key element in defining the relationship between the king and his people (or, at any rate, some of his people).

In the palaces of Mari and Babylon,³ kings regularly received illustrious personages—traditional chieftains, royal vassals, foreign ambassadors—at royal banquets that were held in the palace courtyards at night and perhaps also in the great hall adjacent to the innermost courtyard. A strict etiquette governed these occasions: the king was served first, and if he wished to honor one of his guests, he might offer him his own dish. Guests generally sat in groups designated in advance and determined by their status, profession, and country of origin. They were personal guests of the sovereign, on whom all eyes were focused, to the detriment of any dinner-table conversation among the guests.

After the guests were seated by rank, servants passed among them with water for washing the hands. Each guest was then given a vial of oil perfumed with cedar, ginger, and myrtle with which to anoint himself at the beginning and end of the meal. Then grilled and stewed meats would be served together with flatbreads and vegetables. Dessert usually consisted of fruits and pastries sweetened with honey. The pastries were often molded, and numerous molds have been found in palace kitchens. Menus sometimes included rarer items: freshwater fish, ostrich eggs, mushrooms (or perhaps truffles), and pistachios. Beverages included wine, beer (brewed from barley or dates), and more unusual drinks such as dizimtuhhum and kiziptuhhum, flavored with fragrant reeds, probably styrax, kikkirenum, and henbane.

Dinner was accompanied by music, song, and entertainment in the form of clowns, actors, jugglers, and wrestlers. Did female dancers and singers appear at official banquets, or were they reserved exclusively for the king’s enjoyment?⁴ We do not know how many members of the royal family attended banquets or whether women were invited. Generally the king offered his guests gifts, usually formal attire or objects made of precious metals.

Dinner was served by the palace staff. The cupbearers played a very important role. The grand cupbearer, who was responsible for the complex ritual surrounding the pouring of wine and beer, also served the king and was among the sovereign’s most trusted servants. In compensation for their services, servants and entertainers were entitled to eat what was left over or even to partake of the dinner. According to some household accounts, they ate the same food as the official guests.

By the neo-Assyrian period, in the first half of the first millennium, royal banquets had developed into quite sumptuous affairs. The king ate reclining on a couch, while the queen, who was the only guest placed near him, sat on a chair at his feet. The royal couple were surrounded by the usual fly-swatters, musicians, and servants, but they were isolated, and the queen’s presence marked the occasion as exceptional.

The neo-Assyrian period witnessed the construction of a number of royal palaces, which were inaugurated with great feasts to which the king invited his subjects. The largest of these banquets was that staged by Assurnasirpal II (883–859) to mark the completion of his palace at Kalhu: 69,574 guests were invited to a feast that lasted ten days.⁵ Dozens of items were served in enormous quantities: 1,000 plump oxen, 14,000 sheep, 1,000 lambs, several hundred deer of various kinds, 20,000 pigeons as well as other birds, 10,000 fish, 10,000 jerboa, 10,000 eggs, plus thousands of jugs of beer and skins full of wine. Vast quantities of bread, baskets of fruit and vegetables, and various condiments are also carefully detailed. All the resources of the empire were drawn on, including olives from western Syria. Such royal feasts were a tradition of the Near East: several are mentioned in the Bible, including Balthazar’s feast in Babylon, which preceded the collapse of the neo-Babylonian empire (539 B.C.E.), and the feast of Ahasuerus/Xerxes in the Book of Esther.

As the latter example shows, the presence of the queen and other women at these banquets was a relatively rare occurrence. Records of the wine served at the palace of Kalhu show that the queen’s household maintained wine stores distinct from the king’s. This was also true at Mari. Hence the queen’s household must have held banquets of its own. At Nineveh there was a regular circuit of food distribution.⁶ The highest-ranking personages in the Assyrian empire (the king, queen, royal princes, head eunuch, general-in-chief, and principal provincial governors) donated food for the gods’ daily meal,⁷ and the administrators of estates belonging to these high nobles also contributed. These items were then redistributed to members of the central administration or served at court banquets.

Another source of supply was the gifts brought by people seeking an audience with the king in order to win favor with the monarch and court officials. Lists of recipients of such gifts in kind were compiled in connection with the king’s New Year’s feast as well as for a gathering to which King Esarhaddon invited Assyrians in 672 B.C.E. in order to have them swear allegiance to Assurbanipal, his choice as heir apparent. The food served on this occasion was exactly the same as the food served to the gods: beef, mutton, chicken, rabbit, jerboa, fish, bread, fruit, and alcoholic beverages.⁸ The guests were grouped by profession according to a strict hierarchy. One banquet included the king’s immediate family, top military leaders, members of the royal guard, scholars, high officials of the royal household, and members of the extended royal family. Of course, the gods also numbered among the king’s honored guests. In the first millennium the dishes served to the gods were subsequently eaten by the king. This custom was a royal prerogative.

Religious Banquets

Serving food to the gods was a characteristic feature of Mesopotamian religious life. Every temple employed people for this express purpose: brewers, bakers, butchers, dairymen, and so on. Their job was to prepare dishes to be served to the statues of the gods. For this they were compensated, sometimes with a portion of the food they prepared. When the gods’ food was redistributed, they were entitled to certain parts.

Every major temple contained not only an effigy of the principal deity to which the sanctuary was dedicated but also a divine court: a husband or wife of the god or goddess, a vizir, and officials of the divine administration. The model was, of course, the royal court of Babylonia or Assyria. Each statue received a portion in keeping with its rank in the hierarchy. For some ceremonies the statues were removed from their chapels and brought together for a feast in honor of the principal god, a feast modeled on the royal banquet. On these occasions priests acted as servants: they set tables, passed bowls for washing the fingers, supplied fragrant oil to anoint the guests, served food and drink, played music, and sang hymns in honor of the assembled deities.

To sum up, the Mesopotamian banquet had two essential characteristics: it was a gathering whose purpose was to celebrate the solidarity of a group, and it involved an elaborate ceremonial. Regardless of whether the guests were gods, members of the royal court, or private individuals, they were generally grouped by rank and seated either in chairs or on the ground. Food and drink circulated, and polite exchanges accompanied this process. When alcohol was consumed, guests were urged to maintain a certain decorum.⁹ Banquets were opportunities for their organizers to display wealth and pomp. This ostentatious display, regulated by a strict etiquette, culminated in the neo-Assyrian banquets described by various textual and iconographic sources.

NOTES

1.  See J.-M. Durand, Sumérien et Akkadien en pays amorrite, pt. 1: Un document juridique archaïque de Mari, Mari: Annales de recherches interdisciplinaires (Paris: Editions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1982), 1:79–89.

2.  D. Charpin, A Contribution to the Geography and History of the Kingdom of Kahat, in Tall Al-Hamidiya, vol. 2, ed. M. Wäfler (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1990), pp. 80–81.

3.  Mari, situated on the Euphrates in Syria near the border with Iraq, is the site of a remarkably well-preserved palace from the beginning of the second millennium, a palace where official archives were found in the form of cuneiform tablets. From these two tablets we have been able to learn about the reigns of two kings, Yasmah-Addu (1796?–1776 B.C.E.) and Zimri-Lim (1775–1761 B.C.E.). The palace of Mari was captured, pillaged, and burned by Hammurabi in 1760. Since Hammurabi’s palace in Babylon has not been located, the palace at Mari is our fundamental source of information about royal life in this period.

4.  One document mentions the award of a sheep to a royal musician, the woman Batahra, suggesting that she might have taken part in an official banquet. See Archives royales de Mari, vol. 23 (Paris, 1984), p. 44.

5.  Of this number, 47,074 guests from all the districts of the empire may in fact have been laborers conscripted for the purpose of building the palace.

6.  F. M. Fales and S. Parpola, eds. Imperial Administrative Records, pt. 1: Palace and Temple Administration, State Archives of Assyria 7 (Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1992).