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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
