Safe to eat?
How did the first peoples know which foods were "safe" to eat? Excellent question!
Food historians make educated guesses based on ancient records and modern practices. Based on this evidence, they presume foods were selected or rejected based on observation (they were avoided by the other animals in the area) in conjuction with basic trial and error (if it made the taster sick, it was unlikely others partook). Berries, nuts, fungus, and water sources were especially complicated and concernful.
Myths and legends perpetuated the warnings against consuming known poisonous foods. Advances in technology eventually resulted in the ability (again, probably a matter of trial and error) to modify potentially harmful foods into consumable staples. Meat was preserved; nuts were boiled, vegetables were peeled. Explorers throughout history employed similar techniques when foraging edibles in new environments.
"Considering how few plants are used by the great apes...as food, in comparison with the very great number eaten by primitive peoples in recent times, the experimental consumption of an ever-increasing variety of food-stuffs may be regarded as one of the important conquests of human evolution. Before the domestication of animals, it is unlikely that potential vegetable food would have been given to any other animal species first, to see what effect these would have (perhaps one of the earliest functions of the dog, besides scavenging, was an 'experimental' animal to test 'new' foods--a procedure known to have been practiced in some recent African communities). Thus, even with the exercise of considerable caution, it is likely that many degrees of food poisoning, from mild stomach disorders to death, occurred before man became fully aware of the limits of his food resources-- both plant and animal. It is, of course, impossible to gauge with any certainty as what stage in the million of years of human evolution the quest for a much wider food horizon began. Probably the utilization of new vegetable foodstuffs was a gradual development; it would obviously vary according to the plants available in a particular area. Although a simple knowledge of edible plant resources could be transmitted easily enough in Pleistocene times, it seems unlikely that special methods of food preparation were devised before the Neolithic cultural level. In the case of manioc tubers, for example, which are rich in starch, fat and protein, it is necessary to eliminate...hydrogen cyanide. In order to render them non-toxic, the roots need to be sliced or pulped, soaked in water for a day and the juice then expressed. Such a long, complicated procedure seems unlikely to be pre- Mesothilic in date..."
---Food in Antiquity, Don Brothwell and Patricia Brothwell [Johns Hopkins University Press:Baltimore] expanded edition, 1998 (p. 189-190)
First cooks
Why did humans start cooking their food? Food historians, archaeologists, and paleontolgists do not have exact an answer due to the age of the evidence. They do, however, have theories. While roasting over an open fire appears to be the first method, boiling was not far behind.
"For hundreds of thousands of years the evolving human race had eaten its food raw, but at some time between the first deliberate use of fire--in Africa in 1,400,000BC or Asia in 500,000BC (depending on which theory happens to be the flavour of the month)-and the appearance of the Neanderthals on the prehistoric scene, cooking was discovered. Whether or not it came as a gastronomic revelation can only be guessed at, but since heat helps to release protein and carbohydrate as well as break down fibre, cooking increases the nutritive value of many foods and makes edible some that would otherwise be inedible. Improved health must certainly have been one result of the discovery of cooking, and it has even been argued, by the late Carleton Coon, that cooking was the decisive factor in leading man from a primarily animal existence into one that was more fully human'. Whatever the case, by all the laws of probability roasting must have been the first method used, its discovery accidental. The concept of roast meat could scarcely have existed without knowledge of cooking, nor the concept of cooking without knowledge of roast meat. Charles Lamb's imaginary tale of the discovery of roast pork is not, perhaps, too far off the mark. A litter of Chinese piglets, some stray sparks from the fire, a dwelling reduced to ashes, and unfamiliar but interesting smell, a crisp and delectable assault on the taste buds... Taken back a few millennia and relocated in Europe this would translate into a piece of mammoth, venison or something of the sort falling in the campfire and having to be left there until the flames died down. But however palatable a sizzling steak in ice-age conditions, the shrinkage that resuts from direct roasting would scarcely recommend itself to the hard-worked hunter, so that a natural next step, for tough roots... as for meat, would be slower cooking in the embers or on a flat stone by the side of the fire. Although the accidental discovery of roasting would have been perfectly feasible in the primitive world, boiling was a more sophisticated proposition."
---Food in History, Reay Tannahill [Three Rivers:New York] 1988 (p. 13-14) [NOTE: This book contains much more information on early cooking techniques than can be paraphrased here. Your librarian will be happy to help you find a copy.]
"Homo erecutus may have used fire to a very limited extent some 300,000 years ago, but the evidence is sparse and questionable. Fire's general use, according to both paleontological and archaeolgical records, began only about 40,000 to 50,000 years ago...The use of fire, extended to food preparation, resulted in a great increas of plant food supply. All of the major domesticated plant foods, such as wheat, barley, rice, millet, rye, and potatoes, require cooking before they are suitable for human consumption. In fact, in a raw state, many plants contain toxic or indigestible substances or antinutrients. But after cooking, many of these undesirable substances are deactivated, neutralized, reduced, or released; and starch and other nutrients in the plants are rendered absorbable by the digestive tract. Thus, the use of fire to cook plant foods doubtless encouraged the domsetication of these foods and, thus, was a vitally important factor in human cultural advancement."
---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 2000 (p. 1571)
"Just as we do not know how, where or by whome fire was first domesticated, we cannot really tell anything about the way food was cooked in the most distant Paleolothic period. We can only base conjectures on the customs of existing primitive peoples. Bones and walnut or hazelnut shells have been found on excavated sites, but there is no means of knowing whether they are the remains of cooked meals, the debris of fires lit for heat, or even the remnants of incincerated raw waste matter...[researchers] are inclined to think the meat was roasted, from the evidence of Mousterain sites in Spain and the Dordogne..."
---History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat [Barnes & Noble:New York] 1992 (p. 90)
"Food has long been baked in coals or under heated rocks, steamed inside animal stomachs and leaves, boiled in rockpots by heated stones, and so forth. An oven could be as simple as a hole in the ground, or a covering of heated stones. However, improved textures and flavours may not have been the reason fire was first controlled. People could have employed fire to keep wild beasts at bay, to trap them, to scare them out or to create open grassland, where tender shoots and leaves would be more accessible. People have long used fire to harden wooden weapons, and to keep warm at night. But even these uses, while not cooking in the narrow sense, improve the cooks' supplies, expanding the human niche."
---A History of Cooks and Cooking, Michael Symons [University of Chicago:Urbana] 2000 (p. 221)
"French prehistorian Catherine Perles accepts that we share many aspects of feeding with other animals: other animals carry food to their lairs or transform it before consumption. However, she says, we transform food on a different level. The human species prepares its food by heat...and combines ingredients...She proposes that the culinary act distinguishes the human species, and is not just a symbol of, but a factor in, that very humanisation...Cooking is highly intentional...the culinary act is essentially sharing."
---A History of Cooks (p. 213)
Boiling
Food historians generally agree the first cooking method was roasting over an open fire. Discovery is attributed to happy accident. Boiling was no accident. It was a carefully considered process achieved with tools crafted specifically for the purpose.
Discovery & early primitive methods
"Although the accidental discovery of roasting would have been perfectly feasible in the primitive world, boiling was a more sophisticated proposition. According to conventional wisdom, prehistoric man went to a good deal of trouble for his boiled dinner. First he dug a large pit in the ground and lined it with flat, overlapping stones to prevent seepage. Then he poured in large quantities of water, presumably transported in skin bags. Other stones were heated in the campfire and manhandled by some unspecified means (possibly on the bat-and-ball principle) into the water to bring it to a simmer. The food was then added and, while it was cooking, more hot stones were tipped in from time to time to keep the water at the desired temperature. it is possible. There is no law that says thing have to be done the easy way, and the method is still used by modern tribals. But, in terms of discover, it makes sense only if the idea evolved, imitatively, in some isolated part or parts of the world blessed with hot springs
ปลอดภัยกินวิธีทำครั้งแรกคนรู้จักอาหาร "ปลอดภัย" หรือไม่ คำถามที่ยอดเยี่ยม นักประวัติศาสตร์อาหารทำอย่างมีหลักจากการทายตามระเบียนโบราณและแนวทางปฏิบัติที่ทันสมัย ตามหลักฐานนี้ พวกเขาตีอาหารเลือก หรือปฏิเสธตามสังเกต (จะได้หลีกเลี่ยงสัตว์อื่น ๆ ในพื้นที่) ใน conjuction พื้นฐานทดลองและข้อผิดพลาดถ้ามัน taster ที่ป่วย ก็ไม่น่าคนอื่น partook) ครบ ถั่ว เชื้อรา และแหล่งน้ำได้โดยเฉพาะอย่างยิ่งมีความซับซ้อน และ concernfulตำนานและตำนาน perpetuated ความคำเตือนจากการบริโภคอาหารเป็นพิษที่รู้จักกัน เทคโนโลยีในที่สุดส่งผลให้ความสามารถใน (อีก คงเรื่องการลองผิด) การปรับเปลี่ยนอาหารอาจเป็นอันตรายลงในลวดเย็บกระดาษที่บริโภค มีรักษาเนื้อ ถั่วที่ต้ม ผักปอกเปลือก เอ็กซ์พลอเรอร์ตลอดพนักงานเทคนิคที่คล้ายกันเมื่อพวก edibles ในสภาพแวดล้อมใหม่"พิจารณากี่ใช้โดยลิงดี...เป็นอาหาร เมื่อเปรียบเทียบกับเลขมากที่กิน โดยคนดั้งเดิมในครั้งล่าสุด ปริมาณการใช้ที่มีมากหลากหลายอาหาร stuffs ทดลองอาจถือเป็นหนึ่งพ่วงสำคัญของวิวัฒนาการของมนุษย์ ก่อน domestication สัตว์ ก็ไม่น่าว่า อาหารผักอาจจะมอบพันธุ์สัตว์อื่น ๆ ครั้งแรก เพื่อดูว่าลักษณะพิเศษเหล่านี้จะมี (อาจจะหนึ่งฟังก์ชันแรกสุดของสุนัข นอกจากนี้ scavenging ถูกสัตว์ 'ทดลอง' ทดสอบ 'ใหม่' อาหาร - ขั้นตอนที่จะได้รับการฝึกฝนในบางชุมชนแอฟริกาล่าสุด) ดัง แม้จะ มีการออกกำลังกายของความระมัดระวังมาก มันมีแนวโน้มว่า องศาหลายของอาหารเป็นพิษ จากโรคกระเพาะอาหารอ่อนตาย เกิดก่อนกลายเป็นมนุษย์ทั้งหมดตระหนักถึงขีดจำกัดของเขาอาหารทรัพยากร-ทั้งพืช และสัตว์ ได้ แน่นอน เริ่มไปวัดกับความแน่นอนใด ๆ เป็นขั้นตอนใดในล้านปีของวิวัฒนาการมนุษย์แสวงหาขอบฟ้าอาหารที่กว้างมาก อาจใช้ผักกินใหม่ถูกพัฒนาขึ้น แน่นอนมันจะเปลี่ยนไปตามพืชที่มีในพื้นที่เฉพาะ แม้ว่าความรู้เรื่องพืชกินทรัพยากรอาจจะส่งได้พอในยุค Pleistocene ดูเหมือนว่า วิธีเตรียมอาหารพิเศษคิดค้นก่อนระดับวัฒนธรรมยุคหินใหม่น่า ในกรณีของ manioc tubers เช่น ซึ่งเป็นแป้ง ไขมัน และ โปรตีน ได้กำจัดไซยาไนด์ไฮโดรเจน... ทำให้พวกเขาไม่เป็นพิษ รากต้องการจะหั่น หรือ pulped นำไปแช่ในน้ำสำหรับวันและน้ำแล้ว แสดงการ เช่นขั้นตอนที่ซับซ้อน ยาวดูเหมือนไม่น่าจะ Mesothilic ก่อนในวัน..." ---อาหารโบราณ ดอน Brothwell และแพ Brothwell [จอห์นฮ็อปกินส์มหาวิทยาลัยกด: บัลติมอร์] ขยาย รุ่น 1998 (p. 189-190)พ่อครัวที่แรกทำไมไม่ได้มนุษย์เริ่มอาหารของพวกเขา อาหารนักประวัติศาสตร์ โบราณคดี และ paleontolgists ไม่ได้แน่นอนคำตอบเนื่องจากอายุของหลักฐาน อย่างไรก็ตาม พวกเขา มีทฤษฎี ขณะปิ้งมากกว่าการเปิดไฟดูเหมือนจะ เป็นวิธีการแรก เดือดได้ไม่ไกลหลัง"For hundreds of thousands of years the evolving human race had eaten its food raw, but at some time between the first deliberate use of fire--in Africa in 1,400,000BC or Asia in 500,000BC (depending on which theory happens to be the flavour of the month)-and the appearance of the Neanderthals on the prehistoric scene, cooking was discovered. Whether or not it came as a gastronomic revelation can only be guessed at, but since heat helps to release protein and carbohydrate as well as break down fibre, cooking increases the nutritive value of many foods and makes edible some that would otherwise be inedible. Improved health must certainly have been one result of the discovery of cooking, and it has even been argued, by the late Carleton Coon, that cooking was the decisive factor in leading man from a primarily animal existence into one that was more fully human'. Whatever the case, by all the laws of probability roasting must have been the first method used, its discovery accidental. The concept of roast meat could scarcely have existed without knowledge of cooking, nor the concept of cooking without knowledge of roast meat. Charles Lamb's imaginary tale of the discovery of roast pork is not, perhaps, too far off the mark. A litter of Chinese piglets, some stray sparks from the fire, a dwelling reduced to ashes, and unfamiliar but interesting smell, a crisp and delectable assault on the taste buds... Taken back a few millennia and relocated in Europe this would translate into a piece of mammoth, venison or something of the sort falling in the campfire and having to be left there until the flames died down. But however palatable a sizzling steak in ice-age conditions, the shrinkage that resuts from direct roasting would scarcely recommend itself to the hard-worked hunter, so that a natural next step, for tough roots... as for meat, would be slower cooking in the embers or on a flat stone by the side of the fire. Although the accidental discovery of roasting would have been perfectly feasible in the primitive world, boiling was a more sophisticated proposition."---Food in History, Reay Tannahill [Three Rivers:New York] 1988 (p. 13-14) [NOTE: This book contains much more information on early cooking techniques than can be paraphrased here. Your librarian will be happy to help you find a copy.]"Homo erecutus may have used fire to a very limited extent some 300,000 years ago, but the evidence is sparse and questionable. Fire's general use, according to both paleontological and archaeolgical records, began only about 40,000 to 50,000 years ago...The use of fire, extended to food preparation, resulted in a great increas of plant food supply. All of the major domesticated plant foods, such as wheat, barley, rice, millet, rye, and potatoes, require cooking before they are suitable for human consumption. In fact, in a raw state, many plants contain toxic or indigestible substances or antinutrients. But after cooking, many of these undesirable substances are deactivated, neutralized, reduced, or released; and starch and other nutrients in the plants are rendered absorbable by the digestive tract. Thus, the use of fire to cook plant foods doubtless encouraged the domsetication of these foods and, thus, was a vitally important factor in human cultural advancement."---Cambridge World History of Food, Kenneth F. Kiple and Kriemhild Conee Ornelas [Cambridge University Press:Cambridge] 2000 (p. 1571)"Just as we do not know how, where or by whome fire was first domesticated, we cannot really tell anything about the way food was cooked in the most distant Paleolothic period. We can only base conjectures on the customs of existing primitive peoples. Bones and walnut or hazelnut shells have been found on excavated sites, but there is no means of knowing whether they are the remains of cooked meals, the debris of fires lit for heat, or even the remnants of incincerated raw waste matter...[researchers] are inclined to think the meat was roasted, from the evidence of Mousterain sites in Spain and the Dordogne..."---History of Food, Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat [Barnes & Noble:New York] 1992 (p. 90)"Food has long been baked in coals or under heated rocks, steamed inside animal stomachs and leaves, boiled in rockpots by heated stones, and so forth. An oven could be as simple as a hole in the ground, or a covering of heated stones. However, improved textures and flavours may not have been the reason fire was first controlled. People could have employed fire to keep wild beasts at bay, to trap them, to scare them out or to create open grassland, where tender shoots and leaves would be more accessible. People have long used fire to harden wooden weapons, and to keep warm at night. But even these uses, while not cooking in the narrow sense, improve the cooks' supplies, expanding the human niche." ---A History of Cooks and Cooking, Michael Symons [University of Chicago:Urbana] 2000 (p. 221)"French prehistorian Catherine Perles accepts that we share many aspects of feeding with other animals: other animals carry food to their lairs or transform it before consumption. However, she says, we transform food on a different level. The human species prepares its food by heat...and combines ingredients...She proposes that the culinary act distinguishes the human species, and is not just a symbol of, but a factor in, that very humanisation...Cooking is highly intentional...the culinary act is essentially sharing."---A History of Cooks (p. 213)BoilingFood historians generally agree the first cooking method was roasting over an open fire. Discovery is attributed to happy accident. Boiling was no accident. It was a carefully considered process achieved with tools crafted specifically for the purpose.Discovery & early primitive methods"Although the accidental discovery of roasting would have been perfectly feasible in the primitive world, boiling was a more sophisticated proposition. According to conventional wisdom, prehistoric man went to a good deal of trouble for his boiled dinner. First he dug a large pit in the ground and lined it with flat, overlapping stones to prevent seepage. Then he poured in large quantities of water, presumably transported in skin bags. Other stones were heated in the campfire and manhandled by some unspecified means (possibly on the bat-and-ball principle) into the water to bring it to a simmer. The food was then added and, while it was cooking, more hot stones were tipped in from time to time to keep the water at the desired temperature. it is possible. There is no law that says thing have to be done the easy way, and the method is still used by modern tribals. But, in terms of discover, it makes sense only if the idea evolved, imitatively, in some isolated part or parts of the world blessed with hot springs
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