Stay ConnectedWhat makes us human? Humans are just animals who know how to cook. Whether you’re interested in food, history, or both like I am, this podcast is for you
Visit anthrochef.blog for recipes.
Theme music by Michael Levy of Ancient Lyre. “An Ancient Lyre” and much more is available from all major digital music stores and streaming sites.
Copyright: © Holden Wilson
Everyone knows the saying about what the world’s “oldest profession” is, but you will find a very close runner up in the kitchen. The history of those who cook professionally to make their living goes way, way back to the origins of civilization itself.
It’s another epic journey across the ages, this time with a focus on my own chosen profession and day job. This is the long, ancient history of chefs (and restaurants).
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Theme music by the incredible Michael Levy of Ancient Lyre. “An Ancient Lyre” and much more is available from all major digital music stores and streaming sites.
Have you ever wondered if there’s more to history than dates and major events, what some of the stories and daily lives of regular people looked like? Do you need a reminder that history is populated with real people, who had lives just like we do?
Come take a sweeping journey back into the past as we explore the entire history of civilization, but on a more intimate level, examining as closely as we can the daily lives, challenges, and of course foods, of your average subsistence farmer living in any time and culture.
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Theme music by the incredible Michael Levy of Ancient Lyre. “An Ancient Lyre” and much more is available from all major digital music stores and streaming sites.
Bret Devereaux, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry; Bread: How Did They Make it
Rachel Laudan; Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History
Robert Garland Ph.D Colgate University; The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World
Special thanks to the show’s patrons:
JAKE PENZELL
BENAY O’CONNELL
LILI
RASMUS
DUNCAN MCHALE
REBEKA DAVIDSON
HALEY LEWIS
DECEMBRIANA
ANNE URBANCIC
KAYKE J
RYAN GERRY
RYAN DE BOER
MELODY ROSS
AMY EDMUNDS
When Britain industrialized in the late 1700s and the rest of the western world soon followed, humans were transformed to a degree not seen for 10,000 years when we first settled into farming life.
But it wasn’t some simple flick of the switch, where some entrepreneurs decided to build some factories and invent the modern world. Massive changes to food and agriculture had to happen first. As we’ve come to expect by now, history follows food, in one last grand finale to this season of the podcast. Come listen how!
(Also stick around at the end of the episode for a note about the show and next season)
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Music from this Episode: The Best of Beethoven
Ken Albala – A Cultural and Culinary History of Food
Spartcus Educational – Factory Food
Wisconsin Public Radio – How the Industrial Revolution Gave us Lunch as We Know it
Special thanks to the show’s patrons:
JAKE PENZELL
BENAY O’CONNELL
LILI
RASMUS
DUNCAN MCHALE
REBEKA DAVIDSON
HALEY LEWIS
DECEMBRIANA
ANNE URBANCIC
KAYKE J
RYAN GERRY
RYAN DE BOER
Who founded America? George Washington? Thomas Jefferson? America had founding fathers alright, but they aren’t the ones you’re thinking of. Would you believe that African slaves and Indians were the true minds and bodies behind birthing America’s culture?
It’s all true. Come listen to the story of how American ingredients , cooked by African Slaves, for the benefit of European colonists, created soul food, which created Southern food, which is the foundation of ALL American food. Period.
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Music from this Episode: English Country Dances – 17th Century Music From The Publications Of John Playford
Michael Twitty – The Cooking Gene
Judith Carney – Black Rice
Charles C. Mann – 1493: The New World Columbus Created
The Cambridge World History of Food, Cambridge University Press, 2000
Ken Albala – A Cultural and Culinary History of Food
Special thanks to the show’s patrons:
JAKE PENZELL
BENAY O’CONNELL
LILI
RASMUS
DUNCAN MCHALE
REBEKA DAVIDSON
HALEY LEWIS
DECEMBRIANA
ANNE URBANCIC
KAYKE J
Is good cooking defined by ingredients, skill in preparation, style of cuisine, or is it something even more fundamental and deeply human?
We left out of Africa all the way back in Episode 1, and rarely looked back, but in this episode we finally return to the vast continent, specifically south of the Sahara desert, where more than any other qualities, feeling full and satisfied are what make a great meal, and a great chef is one who can evoke that feeling the most.
Come listen for this and other perspectives on food and dining we so rarely hear about in western history.
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Music from this episode: Traditional Nigerian as well as Zulu drums
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/science/african-pastoral-archaeologists-rewrite-history-of-farming.htmlThe Cambridge World History of Food, Cambridge University Press, 2000
Stirring the Pot, a History of African Cuisine, by James C. McCann
New York Times – African Pastoral: Archeologists Rewrite History of Farming
Early North African Cattle Domestication and it’s Ecological Setting, a Reassessment
Ken Albala – A Cultural and Culinary History of Food
Special thanks to the show’s patrons:
JAKE PENZELL
BENAY O’CONNELL
LILI
RASMUS
Save this episode to go with your morning coffee. Sip that dark and bitter brew, maybe with cream and/or sugar, maybe not, and listen along as you learn of coffee’s origins, how it came to Europe, displaced alcohol and sobered everyone up, and how it would foster revolutions in finance, science, and philosophy.
Thanks to coffee and the coffeehouses people drank it in, this newly caffeinated world would never be the same. This is the story of the happy (polygamous?) marriage between coffee, colonialism, and capitalism.
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A History of the World in 6 Glasses, by Tom Standage
Food: A Cultural and Culinary History, by Ken Albala – The Great Courses
Michael Pollan, “Capitalism’s Favorite Drink” (review of Coffeeland)
The “American Melting Pot” is far older, larger, and even more diverse than most people imagine.
After Columbus reconnected Eurasia and Africa with the Americas, the world began to change in ways it never had before. Europeans, Africans, Asians, and American Indians began migrating out of their landmasses of origin. Some movement was voluntary, much was not. . . . but people of all origins soon found themselves flung around the globe, forced to interact and work with each other, mixing their cultures and genetics together to form hybrid societies.
With hybrid societies come hybrid cuisine. The world’s first fusion food is born as people and their culinary traditions converge.
Did I mention we’ll also cover the origin of hard liquor and mixed cocktails? Don’t miss this episode.
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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, by Charles C. Mann
A History of the World in 6 Glasses, by Tom Standage
Food: A Cultural and Culinary History, by Ken Albala – The Great Courses
Columbia University – History of the World lectures by Richard Bulliet
What does it mean for one culture to “steal” from another? How often does it happen? Is it a bad thing when it does? Listen to explore those questions and more, as we visit the Far East once again, this time even farther east. . . to Japan and Korea.
Also known. . . by myself at least, as the lands of umami and kimchi.
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Korean Traditional Music sampled from The National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts. Republic of Korea / 1997
medium.com – A- Brief Look at the History of Japanese Cuisine
medium.com – A Short History of a Traditional Korean Food: Kimchi
Encyclopedia Britannica – Japanese History
The Great Courses Daily – The Story of Sushi and Japanese Cuisine
PBS Online – Hidden Korean History
Atlas Obscura – How For Centuries, Massive Meals Amazed Visitors to Korea
For millions of years, the two main hemispheres of planet earth were separated by an impassible ocean. North/South America and Eurasia/Africa, two divergent ecosystems, food chains, and human civilizations. . . Then one day in 1492, a guy named Columbus passed that impassible ocean, and began the momentous and tumultuous process of bringing the Old World and the New World back together, into one.
Human civilization and the ecosystems of earth itself would never be the same.
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Theme music by Michael Levy of Ancient Lyre. This rendition of the Hurian Hymn and the whole album “An Ancient Lyre” and much more is available from all major digital music stores and streaming sites.
harvard.edu; The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas
Giancarlo Casale; The Ottoman Age of Exploration
Did Europeans suddenly wake up one day, tired of Medieval living, and decide to change course, to rebirth themselves in modern ideas and start creating good art? Or, as usual, is the story something much more complicated, gradual, and subject to the influence of other cultures from outside?
Hmm, I wonder?… Come listen for an extensive tour of the Italian Renaissance, how it began, and what it meant for people and what they ate.
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The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570), translation and commentary of Terrence Scully
Academia Barilla: Food of the Renaissance
Life in Italy: History of Pasta
The New World Encyclopedia: Italian Renaissance
Daily Life in History: How did the Fall of Constantinople affect the Italian Renaissance
Turkish Cultural Foundation: The Story of Turkish Food
Smithsonian Magazine: Renaissance Table Etiquette and the Origin of Manners
How did Europe get out of its dark ages? It’s not a wholesome story, as the secret to their success was mainly the conquest and plunder of other peoples’ luxury goods, namely their foods and spices. Classic Europe.
Would it surprise if I told you that the Black Death did a lot to help as well? Come take a culinary journey through the High and Late Middle Ages, and see why.
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Food: A Cultural and Culinary History, lecture by Ken Albala
Life in a Medieval Castle: Medieval Food
Trubek, Amy B. (2000). Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
Economic History Association – The Economic Impact of the Black Death
What makes humans special? What makes us rise above all the other animals across the planet, to discover and make great things? Before you answer with the obvious, ” our big brains and intelligence”, take a listen to this episode, for the surprising truth behind humanity’s success.
In short, it’s not smarts that drive us, but our rituals, myths, and superstitions. We find evidence for this in society’s all across the planet, but one place shows it better than any other. Come with me back to the far east, as we take a tour through the cities and restaurants of Medieval China, to explore the true power of our culture and traditions.
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Guzheng music for this episode performed by musician Bei Bei in Los Angeles, California and by Sound of China Guzheng Instruments
The Secret Of Our Success by anthropologist Joseph Henrich
And book report on it by Scott Alexander
Michael Freeman Ch 4 “Sung,” in K.C. Chang, ed., Food in Chinese Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978)
Benn, Charles. (2002). China’s Golden Age: Everyday Life in the Tang Dynasty. Oxford University Press
Facts and Details: Song Dynasty Life
Food: A Cultural and Culinary History, lecture by Ken Albala
In Late Antiquity, without the Roman Empire around to control everything, forest and wilderness reclaimed Europe and its people went local. Start with that, then stir to combine with a rising Catholic Church, and you’ve got a recipe for a brand new culture, one that just might be the foundation of the modern western world.
Let’s get into the Early Middle Ages.
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Food: A Cultural and Culinary History, lecture by Ken Albala
Which ancient civilization made the most flavorful cuisine?
Perhaps you could make a case for any of the cuisines and civilizations we’ve covered thus far, and no doubt each one has been best at something. But when it comes to pure, impact of flavor? Nobody beats India.
Thanks to its geography, history, and available ingredients, as well as some impressively advanced cooking techniques we’ll cover in depth, the story of South Asian civilization is the story of spice, rice, and flavor. Oh, and of vegetarians too!
WARNING: side effects of this episode may include getting very, very hungry!
Music for this episode sampled from the late, great Ravi Shankar
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Food: A Cultural and Culinary History, lecture by Ken Albala
The Better India – History of Dal (Lentils)
Facts and Details – Early History of India
In what capacity can food serve a spiritual need?
The answer is a whole lot! A little over two thousand years ago, the way people thought about themselves and the Universe was beginning to change. Ancient gods, pagan rituals, and beliefs were going out of style, no longer compatible with new, more modern ways of thinking. These beliefs would transform into new religions that would create, and last into the modern world.
And of course, nothing reflected this era of Spiritual transition more than what people ate, or in this case how much of it. Listen today for the origin stories of Christianity, Islam, and their parent religion Judaism, the three new monotheist faiths and their “one true god”, known colloquially at the time as “people of the book”.
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Food: A Cultural and Culinary History, lecture by Ken Albala
Food and Dining in Early Christianity by Dennis E. Smith
Early Islamic Culinary Art: Based on Prophetic Traditions, by Muhammed Ömür Akkor
Seeker: The Rise and Fall of Islam’s Golden Age
Lumen Boundless World History: Pre-Islamic Arabia
The Food Heritage Foundation: The Traditional Food of Ramadan
Many great moments in civilization happened when cultures of the Far East, interacted with those in the West. Through all those moments, there was one region which sat between them, one which was always happy to be in the middle, mediating and facilitating exchange of culture, goods, and cusine. That region is Iran!
Persia, Parthia, Elam. It has gone by many other names through its history, but the Iranian Plateau has always been the great nexus between East and West.
Come for the flatbreads, stay (a couple thousands years) for the rice!
Music for this episode performed by Dariush Talai
Science Magazine – Emergence of Agriculture in the Foothills of the Zagros Mountains in Iran
Oxford Handbooks – Taxation in the Achaemenid Empire
Zoroastrian Heritage Blog – Achaemenian Persian King’s Table
Health and Fitness History – Ancient Persian Nutrition
Welcome to the second Season of the History of Food!
To kick things off, we’ll be walking ground we’ve tread before. The history of pastoral nomadism, that is the animal herders in Europe, Asia, and Africa, has frequently come up in our studies of urban civilizations, but until now, we’ve always looked at them from inside the city walls.
Well, not today. Today, we do our best to head out on the open road, to study the herders and the wanderers, the cheesemakers and the yogurt drinkers, and the monumental effect they had on human history, from their own perspective. Come listen!
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Journal of Young Investigators: Our Furry Friends: the History of Animal Domestication
maptia.com:Nomads of the Tibetan Plateau and Himalaya
Nomads and the Outside World – Anatoly M. Khazanov
Live Science – Nomads in Surprisingly Good Health Despite Poor Diet
FUTURITY – Silk Road Nomads Ate Way Better than City Dwellers
NATL GEOGRAPHIC – We Are What We Eat: The High Altitude Diet of Afghanistan’s Nomads
Rome. Probably what most people think of when they think “Ancient World”. In this episode, however, we discover that in terms of the culinary, the Roman Republic and then Empire was most distinguishable as a lens into the diets and cooking of the wider ancient World before it.
Come listen to find out more.
Music for this episode performed by Michael Levy of Ancient Lyre. His albums An Ancient Lyre, The Ancient Greek Tortoise Shell Lyre, andThe Ancient Egyptian Harp are available from all major digital music stores and streaming sites.
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“Cooking in Ancient Civilizations” by Cathy Kaufman
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome
John E. Stambaugh, The Ancient Roman City(Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988)
Claire Holleran, Shopping in Ancient Rome (Oxford University Press)‘
Invicta Channel, Everyday Moments In History: A Roman Soldier Prepares his Dinner
Of all the food discoveries made across the ancient world, few are more impressive than the domestication and then nixtamlization of maize (corn) in the lands that would one day be called Mexico and Central America.
Mesoamerica is one of just three places where urban civilization evolved from scratch. Come listen, and be amazed how it happened.
Music for this episode performed by Ricardo Lozano and Jorge Ramos.
Olmec Civilization – Ancient History Encyclopedia
Smithsonian – What We Know About the Earliest History of Chocolate
THE COMPLICATED EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF SPICY CHILI PEPPERS – Harvard.edu
What does it mean to be a raw (barbarian) person vs. a cooked (civilized) person? To find out, our culinary and historical journey heads east. Far East, to the lands of the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers. Ancient China.
Guzheng music for this episode performed by musician Bei Bei in Los Angeles, California and by Sound of China Guzheng Instruments
“State Emergence in Early China” by Li Liu
Thought Co., The Origins and History of Rice in China and Beyond
Thought Co., Soybeans (Glycine max) – The Plant History of the Marvelous Soybean
Soybean domestication: the origin, genetic architecture and molecular bases
BBC News, Oldest Noodles Unearthed in China
No civilization lasts forever. In fact, it’s kind of a miracle any starts at all. The conditions must be exactly right for people to come together into urban environments. So like an overextended, teetering Jenga tower, it’s not if but when the whole system will fall, as it did again and again across history.
Come listen as we go back to explore the Neolithic, the history of Mesopotamia after Sumer, and finally the Bronze Age, to understand the riddle of why the rise of civilizations is so tied to their collapse.
Theme music by Michael Levy of Ancient Lyre. This rendition of the Hurian Hymn, the oldest known piece of sheet music, and the whole album “An Ancient Lyre” and much more is available from all major digital music stores and streaming sites.
1177 BC: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline
Against the Grain by James C. Scott
FOOD, ECONOMY AND SOCIAL COMPLEXITY IN THE BRONZE AGE WORLD: A CROSS-CULTURAL STUDY
History Today: Famine in the Ancient Mediterranean
Ancient World Magazine: The Evolution of Sumerian Kingship
Here we are at last, on the shores of Greece.
It’s a brief retelling of Aegean history, a story you’ve heard before, though perhaps not from a chef’s point of view. Come for the history, stay for the foods that made them special. By mastering the sea, the olive, and the grape vine, the Greeks found their own winds toward civilization.
Music by Michael Levy of Ancient Lyre. His original composition “Plato’s Symposium” and the whole album The Ancient Greek Tortoise Shell Lyre and much more are available from all major digital music stores and streaming sites.
AVAILABLE ON ITUNES and GOOGLE PLAY.
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“Cooking in Ancient Civilizations” by Cathy Kaufman
“A History of the World in 6 Glasses” by Tom Standage
Facts and Details- Ancient Greece
Egypt needs no introduction. But here’s one anyway! The ancient people along the Nile built a civilization out of grain like Mesopotamia, but diverged on their own unique path, transforming their food surplus into the greatest monuments the world has ever seen. An overview of Ancient Egyptian history in its entirety, through the lens of food and cooking.
Music by Michael Levy of Ancient Lyre. His original composition “Awe of the Aten” and the whole album The Ancient Egyptian Harp and much more are available from all major digital music stores and streaming sites.
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Sumer was the oldest urban civilization, but not by much. Second place followed quickly, and incredibly was across the ocean in South America.
People on the coast of modern Peru kickstarted a multi-millennium wave of Andean civilization, passing down a legacy of culture, religion, and cuisine all the way down to the Incas, and do so with methods that will turn everything anthropologists thought they knew about civilization on its head.
We’ve neglected the Andeans thus far, but no longer. It’s time to take a closer look.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
THE POTATO CROP, “History of the Potato”
OXFORD REFERENCE Timeline of Andean Civilization
ANCIENT ORIGINS, “The Norte Chico Civilization: Ancient Peruvian Civilization or Complex Society?”
ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA, “The Moche”
NPR: “The Ancient Andean Tradition of Eating Clay May Have Helped To Protect Health”
We’ve done it. We’ve finally crossed into the realm of written records and recorded history. Join me on an odyssey going back 6,000 years ago, when the Sumerians of what is today southern Iraq, took a mega-surplus of grain and transformed it directly into wealth and power. In the process, they managed to invent cities, urbanism, and all the trappings modern civilization. (Not to mention the first written recipes and cookbooks)
Theme music by the incredible Michael Levy of Ancient Lyre. This rendition of the Hurian Hymn, the oldest known piece of sheet music, and the whole album “An Ancient Lyre” and much more is available from all major digital music stores and streaming sites.
AVAILABLE ON SOUNDCLOUD AND ITUNES.
Please leave a review to help spread the word!
(Fun note: this is the era and society that produced the banner art for this website, a royal banquet in Mesopotamia)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Uruk: the First City, by Mario Liverani
Richard Bulliet’s “History of the World” lectures, from Columbia University
Cooking in Ancient Civilizations
Ancient Grain Reveals the Development of the Earliest Cities, ScienceNordic 10/3/17
At last, the third episode of the History of Food is here!
Come travel around the world and follow the Neolithic cultures that spread across it, including very early farmers of Egypt, China, and Old Europe. Then come across the oceans to Mesoamerica, one of two places in the world civilization was invented from scratch, a whole society built on what became the number one crop of all time: corn.
An, ahem, “ancient” poem about it:
Three beans for the Mayan Kings, under the sky
Seven squash for the Olmec lords, with their heads of stone
Nine avocados for Aztec men, doomed to die.
And one for the corn lord on his corn throne.
One crop to rule them all
One crop to find them
One crop to bring them all,
And in the milpa bind them.
Theme music by the incredible Michael Levy of Ancient Lyre. This rendition of the Hurian Hymn, the oldest known piece of sheet music, and the whole album “An Ancient Lyre” and much more is available from all major digital music stores and streaming sites.
AVAILABLE ON SOUNDCLOUD AND ITUNES.
Please leave a review to help spread the word!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley, 5000-3500 BC
Pale Blue Dot, a Vision of the Human Future in Space
Cooking in Ancient Civilizations
Facts and Details, Ancient China
A Comprehensive History of Soy
Theme music by the incredible Michael Levy of Ancient Lyre. This rendition of the Hurian Hymn, the oldest known piece of sheet music, and the whole album “An Ancient Lyre” and much more is available from all major digital music stores and streaming sites.
AVAILABLE ON SOUNDCLOUD AND ITUNES.
Please leave a review to help spread the word!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The Origins of Agriculture in the Near East
Cooking in Ancient Civilizations
Evolution of Domesticated Bread Wheat
Early Domestic Fig in the Jordan Valley
Facts and Details: Early Man and Ancient History
Wheat Domestication: the History and Origins of Floury Grains
Pleased to finally post the first episode of the AnthroChef Podcast, the History of Food!
Theme music by the incredible Michael Levy of Ancient Lyre. This rendition of the Hurian Hymn, the oldest known piece of sheet music, and the whole album “An Ancient Lyre” and much more is available from all major digital music stores and streaming sites.
AVAILABLE ON SOUDNCLOUD AND ITUNES.
Please leave a review to help spread the word!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://boingboing.net/2009/12/16/how-shellfish-saved.html
http://www.npr.org/2010/08/02/128849908/food-for-thought-meat-based-diet-made-us-smarter
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cooking-up-bigger-brains/
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/sunrise/52-02-3/s3amib2.gif
https://www.americanscientist.org/issues/pub/2016/3/meat-eating-among-the-earliest-humans
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/01/mortar-pestle-object-lesson/423852/
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