Humans can’t help but play with their food. Just think of all the different ways of serving potatoes – entire books have been written about potato recipes alone.
We love to flavor food in new and innovative ways. This is how the restaurant industry was created.
Analyse by my teamOne of the oldest examples of charred food ever discovered shows that jazzing up your meal is an ancient human custom dating back at most 70,000 years.
Imagine ancient people enjoying a meal together. As this is the stereotypical image, you can imagine people eating raw ingredients and roasting meat.
Our new study proved both. Neanderthals Homo sapiensComplex diets required many steps to prepare and involved a lot of effort when seasoning and using plants that had bitter or sharp flavors.
Paleolithic hunter–gatherers have never seen this level of culinary complexity.
Our study was not completed until the oldest known plant food remains from south-west Asia were found. Hunter-gatherer websiteAccording to 2018, the oldest known evidence of Jordanian history is around 14,400 years ago.
To examine the early hunter-gatherer diets, we examined food remains from two Paleolithic sites.
Our evidence comes from fragments of prepared foods such as porridge lumps, patties, and bread crumbs that were found in caves.
They look the same to the naked eye and under a low-power microscope. Carbonized crumbs and chunksFragments of fused seeds. However, a powerful scanning electron microscope enabled us to see the details of plant cells.
Prehistoric chefs
We found carbonized food pieces in Franchthi Cave(Aegean. Greece) that dates back to approximately 13,000-12,500 years ago. One fragment of a finely ground food was found at Franchthi Cave. It could have been bread, batter or a type porridge.
In Shanidar Cave(Zagros in Iraqi Kurdistan), associ with The early modern eraAround 40,000 years ago Neanderthals were around 70,000 years oldIn ancient times, food fragments were also found. This included wild mustard, terebinth, and wild pistachio mixed into food.
We found wild grass seeds mixed into pulses in the charred remains. Neanderthal layers. Previous studies by Shanidar have found grass seeds in the layers. Tartar on Neanderthal teeth.
Both sites often had ground or pounded pulse seed such as bitter vetch.Vicia ervilia), grass pea (Lathyrus spp) and wild pea (Pisum spp). These cave dwellers added the seeds to a mixture, which was heated with water during grinding, crushing, or mashing of the soaked seeds.
Most wild pulse mix were bitter-tasting. In Modern cookingTo reduce their bitterness, these pulses are usually soaked, heated, then de-hulled (remove of the seed cover)
Our ancient finds suggest that humans have been doing it for many thousands of years. The fact that seed coats were not completely removed suggests that these people wanted to preserve some of the bitter taste.
What other studies have shown
Wild mustard is an important ingredient in many dishes. Its distinctive taste and sharpness make it a favorite. Seasoning is well documented during the Aceramic period(The 8500 BCE mark the beginning of village living in South-West Asia. Later Neolithic sitesThe region.
Wild almonds (bitter), Terebinth (tannin rich and oily), and wild fruits (sharp and sometimes sour) were all found in plant remains that date back to the Paleolithic period (40,000-10000 years ago).
The addition of these plants to meals made with grasses and tubers, meat, fish and other foods would have given the meal a unique flavor. These plants were consumed for thousands of years in areas many thousands of miles away. These dishes could be the source of modern human culinary traditions.
The evidence from plants discovered during this time period supports the conclusion that both Neanderthals (and early modern humans) ate a variety.
Studies in the past have shown that food residues were trapped in tartar on the teeth and gums of Neanderthals living in Europe and South-West Asia. This shows that they cooked and ate. Grasses and tubersWild barley is an example of this. The medicinal properties of medicinal plants. Carbonized plants’ remains are evidence that they gathered. Pulses Pine nuts.
Remains of plants found on tools used for grinding or pounding in the European later Palaeolithic periods suggest a connection with plants The early modern human race was crushed Wild grass seeds roasted. Evidence from the Pontic steppe’s Upper Palaeolithic site, eastern Europe, suggests ancient people Pounded tubersThey ate them before they could.
Evidence from South Africa’s archaeology dating back to 100,000 years ago is evidence Homo sapiensConused crushed Wild grass seeds.
Although both Neanderthals (and early modern humans) ate plants, it doesn’t appear as consistent in the stable evidence from skeletons. This is what tells us about the main source of this information. protein in dietOver the course of a person’s life.
Recent research suggests that Neanderthal populations may have been present in Europe. top-level carnivores. Homo sapiens appears to have experienced a greater diversityTheir diet was more varied than that of Neanderthals and included a higher percentage of plants.
We are confident that our evidence of early culinary complexity points to the existence of early hunter-gatherer sites throughout the region.
Ceren KabukcuResearch Associate in Archaeology. University of Liverpool
This article has been republished from The ConversationUse the Creative Commons license Please read the Original article.
