"Archaeologists have revealed surprising new insights into why pottery production increased significantly at the end of the last Ice Age – with culture playing a bigger role than expected." Source: Science Daily (2016).
"...Pottery is thought to have originated in Japan around 16,000 years ago [1], but the numbers produced vastly increased 11,500 years ago, coinciding with a shift to a warmer climate. As resurgence in forests took place, an increase in vegetation and animals led to new food sources becoming available."
[1] "Pottery and porcelain ... is one of the oldest Japanese crafts and art forms, dating back to the Neolithic period ... Earthenwares were created as early as the Jōmon period (10,500–300BC), giving Japan one of the oldest ceramic traditions in the world." (Wikipedia)
"Previous thinking suggested that pottery use and production increased to accommodate different cooking and storage techniques for the wider variety of foodstuffs available at this time. However, new analysis reveals this not to be the case.
"Performing molecular and isotopic analysis of lipids extracted from vessels spanning a 9000 year period, the researchers found that pottery was used largely for cooking marine and freshwater animal species – a routine that remained constant despite climate warming and new resources becoming available. Finding surprisingly little evidence of plant processing in pottery, or cooking of animals such as deer, researchers found the only significant change to be the different types of fish consumed, such as an increase in freshwater fish."
Comment: As far as I can tell, this story could be boiled down to one sentence: "The ancient Japanese started making more pottery after the last ice age because they were catching more fish."
"Researchers have discovered an ancient Japanese pottery vessel from the late Jomon period (4500-3300 BP) with an estimated 500 maize weevils incorporated into its design. The vessel was discovered in February 2016 from ruins in Hokkaido, Japan. This extremely rare discovery provides clues on the cultivation and distribution of chestnuts, food in the Jomon era, and the spirituality of ancient Japanese people." Source: Science Daily (2018).
"Spanish authorities are investigating a father and son who were found in possession of ancient Roman artefacts, which they had used to decorate their fish shop in Alicante." Source: RT (7/23/20).
"Officers with Spain's Civil Guard noticed the unusually archaic-looking adornments while carrying out a routine inspection of the fishmongers.
"They immediately called for assistance from the Ministry of Culture to identify and care for the ancient urns [amphorae], which had been left exposed to the elements inside the fish shop for a prolonged period of time."
Note: The artifacts included "13 Roman amphorae dating back possibly as far as the first century AD, along with a metal anchor from the 18th century, and a limestone plate with an inscription which reads: 'East'."
Comment: Father and son have been charged with "crimes against historical heritage," which is ridiculous. The son found these artifacts while out fishing and if he hadn't recovered them they would still be lying on the bottom of the sea. As far as I'm concerned, that makes them the family's property. If they had discovered something rare that would be a different matter, but it's not like we have a shortage of Roman amphorae. Thousands of them have been found over the years and the bottom of the Mediterranean, in particular, must be littered with the things. In just one instance, back in 2019, the wreckage of a single cargo ship carrying 6,000 of them was discovered off the coast of Greece.
The Spanish police are turning the amphorae this family used to decorate their fish shop over "to the Santa Pola Sea Museum for further investigation and safe keeping." (RT) That means the artifacts will probably end up gathering dust on some shelf in the museum basement. How is that better for "historical heritage" than leaving them on display in the fish shop where people could actually see them?
Typical YT video on how to make posca. This is the most basic recipe without honey. No telling how accurate it is.
"Posca, the Roman vinegar-based wonder-drink, is a bit of a mystery, because as much as people keep mentioning it, it is oddly absent from ancient literature. Posca appears in books and articles, being sipped by soldiers and passed around by pals, yet we don't even have a recipe for it!" Source: Pass the Garum (great blog about ancient food and drink).
"Basically, we know that soldiers were given a vinegar ration (Vegetius, Concerning Military Matters, 3.3), and that this vinegar could be mixed with water and drunk. (Celsus, On Medicine, 2.27) Hadrian drank posca to 'be one of the soldiers' (Historia Augusta: Hadrian, 10.2), and from this we can infer that it wasn't a drink usually served to the rich. On the contrary, this was a drink sold on the streets! (Suetonius, Vitellius, 12.1) If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense - vinegar is what is left when wine production goes 'wrong', or if wine is left exposed for too long. Knowing how much wine the Romans got through, it stands to reason that there was a lot of vinegar knocking about - so, why not put it to use?"
The far more complex recipe where honey is actually added to the mixture.
Comment:Pass the Garum claims that this disgusting drink is actually pretty good. I've never tried it so maybe it is, but it sounds nasty. In any case, the Romans weren't the only ones to drink stuff like this. The Greeks had a honey-vinegar concoction called oxymel that they used as a medicine and the Persians drank sekanjabin which was basically the same thing.
Various sources describe posca as the "Roman Gatorade" (Pass the Garum describes it as a "wonder-drink") but I have no idea why a mixture of water and wine vinegar would be considered an energy drink. Vinegar in general is supposed to have health benefits and one study found that acetic acid, the main component in vinegar, improves blood flow and glucose uptake in muscles, so maybe that would have an effect on your performance.
"Caffeine itself wasn’t discovered until 1821, but caffeine-containing foods have been known and cultivated for centuries, since at least the fourth century A.D., when historical records show coffee cultivation began in Ethiopia [see note]. According to legend, Ethiopians became enamored with coffee after observing that grazing animals were more energetic after munching on particular shrubs which we now know as coffee." Source: Tufts Journal (2009).
Note: The legend that the ancient Ethiopians first discovered coffee apparently has no documentary support. According to Wikipedia, "The story of Kaldi, the 9th-century Ethiopian goatherd who discovered coffee when he noticed how excited his goats became after eating the beans from a coffee plant, did not appear in writing until 1671 and is probably apocryphal."
There's another legend that coffee was first discovered by a Yemeni healer named Sheikh Omar. Exiled for some reason to live in a desert cave, he was starving to death and tried eating some berries he found on the local shrubbery," but they were too bitter so he roasted them, hoping that would improve the flavor. The roasting made them too hard, however, so he boiled them and ended up with a "fragrant brown liquid" that "revitalized and sustained" him for days. When his home city learned about his discovery, they called him back from exile and made him a saint, rightly so if any of this actually happened.
Even though these stories are legendary, they might reflect actual history:
"The earliest credible evidence of coffee-drinking or knowledge of the coffee tree appears in the middle of the 15th century in the accounts of Ahmed al-Ghaffar in Yemen. It was here in Arabia that coffee seeds were first roasted and brewed, in a similar way to how it is prepared now. Coffee was used by Sufi circles to stay awake for their religious rituals. Accounts differ on the origin of the coffee plant prior to its appearance in Yemen. From Ethiopia, coffee could have been introduced to Yemen via trade across the Red Sea." (Wikipedia)
I don't see how anyone could prove definitively that coffee was first discovered in Yemen. After all, the earliest discovery could have been made anywhere in the coffee belt, a huge area that covers most of MesoAmerica, South America, Africa, India, Australasia, southern Indochina and parts of Oceania. I wouldn't be surprised if coffee wasn't discovered multiple times in different parts of the world or that its use in one form or another dates back to the Stone Age.
One way or another, I'm just glad that somebody discovered this fantastic drink -- the greatest addiction in the world.
Coffee is the nectar of the gods. The blathering idiots who claim that it's dangerous and that we would gain all sorts of health benefits by giving it up are a bunch of communists. I literally can't function without coffee, lots of coffee. I can't even get out of bed without it and I drink it constantly throughout the day. Coffee is my preferred caffeine-delivery vehicle, but tea is almost as good and I drink gallons of that every day as well. I'm not a coffee snob, however. As far as I'm concerned, quantity is more important than quality. I can never get enough of this ambrosia and I know I'm not alone.
"The burger may be America’s favorite food, but the popular dish was gifted to us by the Romans." Source: Daily Mail.
"In an ancient Roman cookbook a meal called ‘Isicia Omentata’ uses minced meat, juniper berries, wine, pine nuts and a salty fish-based sauce – all of which are formed into a patty.
"The book, called Apicius [next video], was composed in the late fourth or fifth centuries with recipes created as early as the first century and provides recipes that the ancient empire dined on."
The recipe book, Apicius. This is apparently an 8th century copy of an earlier (4th century?) version.
Comment: Garum, the fermented fish sauce used in this Roman burger, was hugely popular back then but I've always thought it sounds disgusting. I could be wrong, though; after all, I like soy sauce which is made from a fermented paste of soybeans, grain and various molds. The Isicia Omentata might have been pretty good after all, but even so there's no denying that the best hamburger in history is the Heart Attack Grill's Octuple Bypass Burger.
"People who lived 15,000 years ago in what is now Israel feasted on snakes and lizards, archaeologists have discovered." Source: Live Science.
"Prior excavations in the Levant, a geographic region that historically included Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and parts of Syria and Jordan, unearthed thousands of bones belonging to lizards and snakes. Animal bones are usually found where ancient people once lived if the animals were being eaten. But it was unknown if lizards and snakes were part of the human diet or if their bones were left behind by other predators.
"By experimenting on the bones of modern squamates — the group that includes lizards and snakes — researchers developed visual references for different types of surface damage, such as erosion, burning or digestion by birds of prey. When the scientists compared these patterns to damage in squamate bones from the el-Wad Terrace, a cave site near Israel's Mount Carmel that was occupied by humans between 11,500 and 15,000 years ago, they determined that many of the ancient bones there had been eaten by people."
This entire lecture series should play automatically, but if it doesn't, the rest of the series can be found here.
"For all of the glory and grandeur of Ancient Rome, the Roman economy never developed into anything terribly complex compared to modern economies. Ancient Rome was an agrarian and slave based economy whose main concern was feeding the vast number of citizens and legionaries who populated the Mediterranean region. Agriculture and trade dominated Roman economic fortunes, only supplemented by small scale industrial production." Source: "Ancient Roman Economy," United Nations of Roma Victrix.
According to the Oxford Classical Dictionary, "The growth of Rome to a city of perhaps 250,000 in the time of the Gracchi and of up to one million under Augustus, far outstripping the productive capacity of her hinterlands, created an unprecedented demand for imported foodstuffs." The regular distribution of "a set monthly ration of grain at a set price for adult male citizen residents" was established by the populari Gaius Sempronius Gracchus, later assassinated for his reforms, and the ration was made free by P. Clodius Pulcher in 58 BC.
The Gracchi brothers were representatives of the lower class who attempted to make reforms benefiting the common people. Both were murdered by the ruling aristocracy for (among other things) their land reforms which would have had a major impact on the patrician's power and incomes. This conflict between the commoners and the rapacious nobility still continues to this day.
The emperor Augustus stabilized the number of residents entitled to the grain dole "at or below 200,000" in 2 BC. "[The] public supply, drawing on the grain paid to the state as rent or tax in Sicily, Africa and (from 30 BC) Egypt, helped the privileged minority who held tickets of entitlement, which could be inherited or sold. But the monthly ration did not meet a family's need for grain, and the tickets did not necessarily go to the poor." (OCD)
"Grain made into bread was, by far, the most important element in the Roman diet." (Wikipedia) In later years the grain dole, known as the Cura Annonae, and the construction of the new Colosseum led to the development of the "bread and circuses" system for controlling (or trying to control) the population of Rome, making the grain supply of Egypt critical to the survival of the city.
Even the state couldn't meet the huge demand for grain in a city the size of Rome, however, and this created all sorts of problems. "State grain met no more than a portion of the city's annual grain needs," according to the OCD. "The rest had to be supplied by the free market. Furthermore, the importation of the state grain depended upon private traders, who in times of crisis had to be offered considerable incentives to involve themselves in the trade."
The grain supply of Egypt was so crucial that the Roman emperors made sure to keep the country under tight control:
"As a key province, but also the 'crown domain' where the emperors succeeded the divine Pharaohs, Egypt was ruled by a uniquely styled Praefectus augustalis ('Augustal prefect'), instead of the traditional senatorial governor of other Roman provinces. The prefect was a man of equestrian rank and was appointed by the Emperor." (Wikipedia)
If the wrong man was appointed to govern Egypt, he could easily pressure Rome into meeting his demands. I don't think it ever happened in reality, but this scenario was portrayed in HBO's Rome where Marc Antony withholds the grain supply in order to force Octavian into declaring war.
Analyzing a "vast amount of food waste" discovered during a dig at the kitchen in Durham Cathedral, archaeologists have recreated the diet of the monks and other people who lived there over the centuries (app. 14th cent - Second World War).
According to The Journal (2014), "fish would have been an important part of the religious order’s diet, and the finds showed that the monks were eating North Sea cod, herring, sole, turbot, and salmon and trout from the River Wear."
Other menu items included "'white meat' calves" and "a wide range of birds" that ranged "from domestic fowl to game and wild birds from the estuaries and moors of the region." The monks may have also eaten puffins and lapwing.
Comment: This menu is necessarily incomplete because things like fruit, vegetables, bread, etc., wouldn't have been preserved after so many years, but it sounds to me like these monks and the other inhabitants of the castle ate better than most people do today. Their food was undoubtedly more healthy than today's diet of sugar-coated lard and processed "meat products" saturated with preservatives, artificial flavoring and other toxic waste.
Note: "Durham Cathedral was built in the late 11th and early 12th centuries to house the relics of St Cuthbert (evangelizer of Northumbria) and the Venerable Bede. It attests to the importance of the early Benedictine monastic community and is the largest and finest example of Norman architecture in England. The innovative audacity of its vaulting foreshadowed Gothic architecture. Behind the cathedral stands the castle, an ancient Norman fortress which was the residence of the prince-bishops of Durham." Source: UNESCO World Heritage List.
"Henry's food was prepared, in a private kitchen, under the direction of the Privy Master Cook, John Bricket." Source: Historic Royal Palaces.
"The King ate in his private rooms, away from the crowds but on more formal occasions he sat alone at a high covered table in his Presence Chamber, under the canopy of state. He chose from a huge buffet, sampling whatever took his fancy. Dishes included game, roasted or served in pies, lamb, venison and swan.
"For banquets, more unusual items, such as conger eel [see below] and porpoise could be on the menu. Sweet dishes were often served along with savoury.
"Only the King was given a fork, with which he ate sweet preserves. Forks were used to serve, cook and carve, but eating with them didn’t become popular until the 17th century."
Comment: I love the term "presence chamber." Technically the outer room of the privy chamber, a private "apartment" the king maintained at his various royal residences, the presence chamber was the place where ordinary mortals were granted the privilege of entering into the awesome presence of the king himself. At times, they had the extra honor of viewing the majestic king stuffing his face with the endless stream of food that came out of the royal kitchens.
In his youth, Henry VIII was an athlete, but as he grew older he turned into a seriously grotesque chubster who was apparently so fat he couldn't even walk around on his own:
"Late in life, Henry became obese, with a waist measurement of 54 inches (140 cm), and had to be moved about with the help of mechanical inventions. He was covered with painful, pus-filled boils and possibly suffered from gout." (Wikipedia)
Henry ate a lot, true, but that isn't the primary reason he got so fat. Everyone at court ate like he did back then (more or less). Furthermore, everyone in Tudor England was drunk all the time (see 0:29 in the top video). Henry probably started to turn into a blimp when leg injuries forced him to become more sedentary:
"Even by modern standards, and certainly by those of the ordinary man or woman in 16th-century England, Henry ate a good deal. That was what his social group, the high nobility, did. When the noble entertained, food was often served in large quantities as part of the display of generosity or 'magnificence' incumbent upon them, and as proof of their high social status." Source: Zocalo Public Square.
"...His diet was highly calorific, but until his late 30s, Henry’s relentlessly active lifestyle burned most of them off almost as fast he absorbed them. In his early 20s, the king had a 32-inch waist and 40-inch chest. His athletic build at 29 can be judged fairly accurately from a made-to-measure suit of armour he wore at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the meeting held in June 1520 with his great rival Francis I of France.
Henry suffered various injuries over the years from jousting and hunting accidents. He also developed leg ulcers which seriously hampered his mobility but had no effect on his ability to cram food into his increasingly bloated pie-hole:
"Henry was clearly often disabled, unable to move without intense pain. Exercising in the way he had done as a young man proved impossible, although he continued to ride and to hunt for some years. His appetite was, nevertheless, undiminished. He quickly gained weight, which could then not be worked off. An unhealthy cycle was set in place."
If I could eat like Henry VIII I'm not sure I could resist it, either. Just looking at the food in the top video makes me hungry, but then again I get hungry watching instructional videos about how to slaughter and butcher hogs. Venison, lamb, sweet preserves, game pies -- it sounds delicious and I don't think I would feel particularly guilty about chowing down on a porpoise or a swan. Eels sound nasty, though, or they did until I watched the next video.
This looked great until he pureed it into a disgusting mess.
Despite his prodigious intake, Henry VIII may have been malnourished. This seems hard to believe considering the amount of food the court put away:
"Tudor cuisine was lavish. An ambassador to Henry VIII’s court is quoted as saying, '…the wealth and civilization of the world are here; and those who call the English barbarians appear to me to render themselves such.'" Source: Picture Britain.
The Tudors consumed a huge number of game animals, most of which I can't even identify:
"First of all, there was a lot of meat going on during this era. Just listen to this account of game found in one household’s larder: 'cranys, redshankes, fesauntes, sholardes, pacokes, knottes, bustardes, great byreds, hearonsewys, bytterns, reys, kyrlewes, wegions, dotrells, ternes, smale byrdes.' Henry’s daughter Elizabeth clearly had a taste for meat; her court went through 1,240 oxen, 8,200 sheep, 760 calves, and 1,870 pigs in a single year. In addition to vast amounts of meat, there were also delicious confections such as trifles, fools, whitepot (a baked dish of cream, eggs, and currants), clotted cream, and leach. Needless to say, this kind of cooking was hardly conducive to trim waistlines."
Most of the game animals with weird medieval names are birds, I think. The byttern or bittern looks especially plump and tasty.
The problem with a diet like this is that it consisted mostly of meat, breads and lots of alcohol (water was apparently considered to be unhealthy and the nobility avoided vegetables because they were thought to be "peasant food."). The lack of vitamin C and other nutrients in the royal diet could cause diseases like scurvy. The early symptoms of scurvy, in particular, include "weakness, feeling tired and sore arms and legs" (Wikipedia) which would have aggravated the effects of Henry's injuries and made it even harder for him to burn more calories than he consumed. And the result of that can be dramatic.