Have you ever been so hungry that you could eat “nearly anything”?
Well, you are not the first to be that ravenous, for early humans searched for food daily in the air, on the ground, and even under the ground when choice was sparce.
As with all living creatures, hunger was a driving force for early humans. Birds and all wild creatures spent most of their waking hours in search of food. Hunter-gatherers had to locate climes where edibles grew in the sunshine. When seasons changed, they migrated, sometimes from mountainous terrain to the shores of the sea. When a huge climate shift occurred in prehistoric Japan and large animals in the mountains died from the cold, meat eaters became seafood lovers. With a shift in the earth and atmosphere, climate changes periodically––naturally. Necessity demands adjustment.
When humans perfected rock-slinging skills, they were able to bring down, not just rabbits and prairie hens, which they could not outrun nor snare, but antelope and other small swift mammals. Through honed skill in creating efficient stone weapons, like knives and scythes, killing and butchering prey became easier. With protein added to the diet, surely humans gained more physical strength, endurance, and perhaps a longer life.
Foraging began as primal hunter-gatherers’ main occupation for subsistence, and in wartime, it was often the only survival for bombed out cities with no animals and no farms. In North America, foraging had a resurgence for its health benefits, as well as a survivor skill, beginning with health food advocate Euell Gibbons in the 1960s. Now many books have been written extolling the benefits of “nature’s bounty” and we humans find ourselves back to where we began, but with choice rather than desperation.
From that early beginning, only imagination limited food choice. In modern France, land snails, escargot, are favorite fare, and until recently shops sold horse meat. While the lack of refrigeration kept pork off the menu of Hebrews and Arabs, Asian women kept pigs, easy to care for and breed, in the backyard. They still prepare and enjoy various offal, unwanted waste, and organs in their delicious food. Across the seas, Europeans even prepared pickled pigs’ feet and added trotters, pettitoes, pig’s foot, filled with fat and protein, to their menus. With exceptions, the world loves pork. Throughout the world, women tended domestic fowl, chickens and ducks.
Sheep were perhaps the earliest domestic animals to be enjoyed at table. Ancient peoples raised herds of sheep, and goats driven from pasture to pasture, to graze. Sheep not only yielded meat, but also wool for the weaver. As they were for Abraham and Sarah, herds of sheep meant money and other treasure. A gift of herds from a guilt-ridden pharaoh including “sheep, goats, cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels,”1 made Abraham a rich man.
In lands where cattle thrived, beef was enjoyed. In Egypt, where people worshipped animal gods––like the Mnevis, Apis, and Buchis bulls, and the cow goddess, Hathor––who had more temples than all the other gods––cattle were bred for food. People from across the globe enjoy different cuts of beef. British enjoy a joint of beef, a roast, some relish Rocky Mountain oysters, bull testicles. Still others, in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, prefer the delicacy of bovine rectum.
In Spanish and Mexican bullfights, the victorious toreador cuts the tail off the tortured and defeated bull as a trophy of his victory over the powerful beast and proudly displays it as he marches heroically around the arena for all to see. The bull’s tough meat is probably ground for chili, stews and street tacos.
From the rivers and the seas were gleaned delicacies: mollusks––snails, clams, mussels, and sea slugs––lobster, shrimp, turtles, fish of every description, octopus, and other denizens of the deep. The Japanese still enjoy a fine gourmet soup garnished with a floating fish eye. Westerners have enjoyed a bite of rattlesnake.
Hungry humans have adapted their palates to everything from hummingbird tongues on the Roman feast table to breast of partridge. One is reminded that even insects have been a tasty treat as St. John the Baptist ate wild honey and locusts,2 and today Oaxacan chapulines, toasted grasshoppers, are a tasty treat and enjoyed on North American menus. Humans learned to appreciate Earth’s bounty.
1 Old Testament. Genesis 12:16
2New Testament. Mark 2:16
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Grātiās tibi !
Dr. P. D. Sargent,
Ancient Scribe sharing new ideas twice a month