TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE IN ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS
And Mo Zi, writing during the late Zhou period (approximately 1100 – 200 B.C.E.) when a banquet for distinguished guests might have as many as 16 dishes involving exotic substances, offered the following advice: Stop when hunger is satiated, breathing becomes strong, limbs are strengthened and ears and eyes become sharp. There is no need of combining the five tastes extremely well or harmonizing the different sweet odors. And efforts should not be made to procure rare delicacies from far countries. (Chang 1977, 49). In this chapter, we will look first at what different groups of people ate and the technologies by which their food and drink was procured, processed, stored, distributed, and consumed. We will then consider the manufacture of textiles and the production of clothing.
WHAT PEOPLE ATE
The food traditions of each ancient civilization were based on two critical factors. One was the ensemble of available indigenous foodstuffs, and the other was the range of techniques available for preparing foods. Well before the end of antiquity in each civilization except for that of Mesoamerica, which remained isolated until the post-Columbian period, virtually all of the foodstuffs available in any civilization were available to the wealthy either because the plants or animals were now domesticated in new locations or because the edible materials were traded for. However, each food tradition remained distinctive in part because food preferences had been established early and were not easily changed, as when Greek and Roman preferences for olive oil lead them to reject the use of butter for both cooking and as a condiment. Other food preferences were reinforced by religious taboos, as in the Hebrew rejection of pork as human food. Still others were shaped by the character of local cooking technologies. Wheat, for example, had been used for making breads in the Near Eastern cultures from which it was appropriated, but when it arrived in China, the Chinese had not developed ovens for baking breads, mills for grinding flour, or a taste for baked breads and cakes, thus the new materials were adapted to local cooking techniques and turned into noodles, dumplings, and steamed buns, which reentered the West only during the Renaissance. Baking ovens were eventually imported from the West, but baked goods never became a central form of grain food in China as they were in the West.The earliest civilizations were all characterized by dramatic increases in grain production made possible by river basin and irrigation agriculture. It should hardly be surprising, then, that grains became the primary source of calories in all ancient civilizations, though it is less obvious that fermented grains should become the major source of liquids in people’s diets as well. Both cultivated and wild varieties of indigenous vegetables and fruits were also eaten in all civilizations. Dairy products were highly prized in some early civilizations, but they were completely absent from Chinese foods, and while the Greeks and Romans enjoyed cheese, they looked down on those who drank milk and used butter. Meat protein from fish, fowl, domesticated animals, and, to a lesser extent, from wild game and insects became a much less predominant form of nutrition than it had been in pre-literate societies. The poor in most early societies got most of their animal protein from fish, eating meat almost exclusively in connection with religious ceremonies during which sacrifices were made and then shared. Those who were wealthy continued to eat meat with most meals, but even for them, grains were the most important foods. Today, those of us who are not vegetarians are likely to see the reduced availability of meat in negative terms, but those in most early civilizations saw grain eating as superior to meat eating, characterizing the uncivilized people around them as people who wear the skins of animals, live in caves, and “do not eat grain-food” (Chang 1977, 42). What follows are lists of the most common foodstuffs that have been established either archeologically or from literary sources for each major civilization during its early years, supplemented by lists of major items appropriated through cultural exchanges at a later period but before the end of antiquity for each civilization. These lists have been compiled from the food texts in the bibliography. Where I am aware of disputes about whether a foodstuff was available or not, I have generally not included it. In many cases, those foods listed as indigenous came originally from elsewhere but were in place by the time that writing began and/or large cities came into existence. In almost all cases, grains and vegetables were smaller, harder, differently colored, and, in the case of vegetables, more bitter, than present-day varieties. Classical Greece and Rome had access to almost all foodstuffs in use in Mesopotamia and Egypt, especially after Alexander the Great’s conquests ( by 323 B.C.E.) and the maximum extension of the Roman Empire ( by 100 B.C.E. ) respectively, so I have chosen to emphasize their indigenous foodstuffs and those that they consciously chose to adopt extensively.
Mesopotamia:
Original grains: einkorn wheat, emmer wheat, barley. Later additions: durum wheat, spelt wheat, bread wheat, millet.
Original vegetables: onions, lettuce, leeks, peas, beans (green, kidney ), garlic, cabbage, cucumber, carrots, eggplant, radishes, beets, turnips, chickpeas, lentils.
Original fruits: dates, apples, figs, pomegranates, apricots, cherries, pears, plums, quinces. Later additions: grapes.
Original meats: sheep, goat, cattle, pig, ducks, geese, quail, fish (about 50 varieties), shellfish, locusts. Later additions: chicken.
Dairy products: milk ( lower class), butter, cheeses.
Original other: salt, flax seed, eggs, anise, asafoetida, bay, capers, coriander, cress, cumin, dill, fennel, fenugreek, marjoram, mustard, mint, rue, saffron, sage, thyme. Later additions: sesame, olives, honey, pepper.
Egypt:
Original grains: emmer wheat, barley. Later additions: bread wheat, spelt wheat.
Original vegetables: onions, garlic, leeks, water melons, squashes, cos lettuces, celery, papyrus, lotus, radishes, turnips, mustard greens, lentils, peas, chickpeas, lupines, fenugreek. Later additions: fava beans. Original fruits: dates, grapes, pomegranates, figs, carobs.
Original meats: pigs, sheep, goats, donkeys, cattle, ducks, pigeons, geese, game, freshwater fish, crocodiles. Later additions: chickens.
Dairy products: none widely used.
Original other: salt, duck and goose eggs, linseed, honey, aniseed, asafetida, basil, chervil, cumin, dill, juniper, marjoram, mint, rosemary, rue, sage. Later additions: hens’ eggs, olives, safflower, black pepper, cinnamon, coriander.
China:
Original grains: foxtail millet ( Setaria italica ), ordinary millet ( Panicum milaceum ), rice (only in the more rural south), hemp. Later additions: rice (in the north), bread wheat, barley.
Original vegetables: artemesia, soybeans, velvet bean, broad bean, taro and yam (in the south), malva, musk melon, gourd, turnip, leek, lettuce, field sowthistle, cattail, lotus roots, various grasses, Chinese cabbage, mustard greens, garlic, spring onion, water chestnuts, bamboo shoots . Later additions: peas, cucumbers.
Original fruits: apricot, pears, peaches, plums, strawberries, oranges. Later additions: jujube, lychee, oranges, grapes, pomegranate.
Original meats : dogs, pigs, sheep, horses, cattle, water buffalo, game, chicken, pullet, goose, quail, partridge, pheasant, pigeon, quail, sparrow, peacock, crane, fish (mostly varieties of carp), turtles, shellfish, snakes, bees, snails, frogs.
Dairy products: none widely used.
Original other: salt, eggs of many fowl, fagara, cinnamon, honey, ginger root. Later additions: walnuts, sesame seeds, coriander, caraway seeds.
Harappan and Vedic India:
Original grains: spelt wheat, rice, barley. Later additions: bread wheat, emmer wheat.
Original vegetables : long peppers, lentils, beans, cucumber.
Original fruits: jujube, banana, lemons, limes, dates. Later additions: pears.
Original meats : chicken, sheep, humped cattle, pig, turtle, goat, water buffalo, fish.
Other: manna (sweet insect secretion deposited on tamarisk bush), cane sugar, curry.
Classical Greece:
Grains: barley, emmer wheat, bread wheat.
Vegetables: lettuces, leafed cabbages, onions, asparagus, lupines, peas, beans, parsnips, mushrooms (for the poor).
Fruits: grapes, figs, apples, cherries, pears, peaches, plums.
Meats: chickens, pigs, sheep, goats, cattle, dogs, game, fish, shellfish.
Dairy products: cheese.
Other: olives and olive oil, honey, long peppers, silphium, sumac, local herbs, acorns.
Classical Rome:
Grains: emmer wheat, bread wheat, spelt wheat, barley.
Vegetables: lettuce, cabbage, beets, turnips, radishes, onions, carrots, parsnips, celery, asparagus, peas, beans.
Fruits: grapes, berries, apricots, peaches, quince, citron.
Meats: pigs, sheep, goats, cattle, chickens, dormice, rabbits, wild birds, fish, shellfish (including cultured oysters), grasshoppers.
Dairy products: cheese, milk for cooking only.
Other: olive oil, honey, mushrooms, cumin, coriander, lovage, black pepper.
Mesoamerica:
Grains: maize.
Vegetables: sweet potato, tomato, chilies, pumpkins, squashes, gourds, zucchini, kidney beans, lima beans, manioc.
Fruits: prickly pear, lucuma (star apple), pacae, avocado, guava, papaya.
Meats: dog, turkey, guinea pig, llama, alpaca, fish, shellfish, caterpillars, grasshoppers, bees, ants, termites. Other: honey, mushrooms, peanuts.
THE PRODUCTION AND STORAGE OF BEERS AND WINES
Humans in all civilizations undoubtedly drank water, either straight or mixed with something else, for every adult has to replace approximately 2.5 liters of water that are eliminated on average each day, but water was not the drink of choice in any ancient civilization. All civilizations produced beers and/or wines that were strongly favored because of their taste, their intoxicating effects, and possibly because the alcohol killed many bacteria, making beer and wine safer than water to drink. Furthermore, the fermentation process that produces beer and wine increases lysine levels, making the proteins in grain more useable by the body. It also increases the B vitamins and boosts the body’s ability to absorb calcium and other minerals, so fermented grain is more nutritious than cooked or raw grain ( Kaufman 2006). Both beer and wine are produced by fermenting grains or fruits to create alcohol. In general, beers are produced when the ferment is heated enough to speed up the fermenting process but not enough to kill the yeast that converts the initial sugars to alcohol. This heat can be supplied either by exposure to fire or by exposure to the sun or even high ambient temperatures above about 85° Fahrenheit. Thus, beer was very easy to produce in the hot climates of Mesopotamia and Egypt, and beer became the primary drink of the common people. Sumerian documents indicate that eight different beers were made from barley, eight from emmer wheat, and three from mixtures well before 2000 B.C.E . Egyptian pyramid texts suggest that five beers were brewed there ( Brothwell and Brothwell 1969). Wines are produced when fermentation proceeds under relatively cool conditions. When the ferment is hot, the long organic molecules in the mature grains and fruits, such as the tannins in grapes, are broken down, leaving the characteristic bitter taste of beer. When the temperatures during the fermentation process remain low enough, the long chain molecules persist and the liquor retains more of the natural flavors of the initial fermenting stock. Wines were more difficult to produce in the semitropical climates of Egypt and Mesopotamia, and probably in Mesoamerica, so then, as now, wine became the preferred drink of those who could afford it. In Greece, Rome, and China wine was both easier to produce and the preferred drink of all classes. In the cases of both beer and wine, fermentation is a self-limiting process because the alcohol eventually kills the yeast that produces it. Because heat also destroys yeast, beers generally have a lower alcohol content than wines. Wines, however, were almost always diluted with water, so as they were usually drunk, wine and beer probably had roughly equivalent alcohol content. Some strong beers were produced in antiquity, however, by adding large amounts of yeast, and these were almost certainly the most potent drinks normally available. There were two basic methods for producing beer in ancient Egypt, from which the greatest amount of archeological evidence is. Both were in use before 3000 B.C.E., and both remained in use throughout antiquity. In what was probably initially the most common method, an appropriate amount of grain — usually barley in Egypt and Mesopotamia — was husked and ground into flour and then mixed with water and a yeast starter to leaven it. The dough was formed into a loaf and only partially baked, so as to leave the yeast alive. The partially baked dough was then crumbled into a fired clay container of water to create a mash. The container, which was usually flat-bottomed and conical in shape, was then placed in an oven with several others (at one of the oldest brewery sites dating from around 3500 B.C.E., each oven had 35 conical containers about 50 cm high and set into the ground about 15 cm deep) to ferment (Curtis 2001). The containers were coated with clay and mud bricks and then hot fuel embers were piled against them to provide heat. After about two days, the beer was decanted into amphorae (narrow necked fired clay vessels, usually with pointed bottoms) to be stored or transported to where it would be used. Beer made in this way contained a large amount of residual solid matter, and pictures suggest that it was drunk through a narrow straw to extract the liquid. In what gradually became the predominant method of beer making, the barley or other grain was wetted and allowed to germinate, which produced enzymes that broke down the starches in the grain into sugars. The damp and barely germinated “malt” was dried and heated enough to stop the further growth of the rootlets; then it was usually roasted in an oven to cure it at over 176 grades Fahrenheit. The extent of roasting usually determined the taste and strength of the resulting beer. The cured malt was then ground and stored for later use. When the brewer was ready to brew the beer, the malt was ground into flour, mixed with unmalted grain, and then placed in hot water (to reactivate the enzymes). After several days, the mixture was strained to produce a liquid that contained relatively little solid matter. This liquid was then boiled and cooled. Finally, yeast was added so the sugars in the liquid could be converted to alcohol, probably by reheating. Mesopotamian beer making probably began slightly earlier than that in Egypt, but we have fewer details about the process, though greater evidence of the amounts of materials used. As far as we can tell, brewing in Mesopotamia differed from that in Egypt largely because the Mesopotamians tended to add more fruit flavorings to the mash, which provided both a wider range of tastes and a slightly stronger beer. There is also no indication that Mesopotamian beers were artificially heated while they fermented, rather the jars of mash were allowed to stand in the sun to provide heat. Some fermenting jars were provided with small holes in the bottom and smaller jars were left under them to collect the clear beer, while the solid matter was left in the fermenting jar. Finally, up until the Old Babylonian period, around 1800 B.C.E., brewing was done primarily by women and was frequently associated with taverns run by women (Curtis 2001). The Greeks and Romans considered Beer a barbarian drink, though Roman soldiers stationed in beer-producing regions often turned to it when wine was not available. There is no indication that the Chinese produced beer, rather than wine, and we simply do not know whether the fermented drinks of the Harappan or Mesoamerican civilizations were beers, wines, or both. Evidence suggests that the first wines produced from grapes were imported into Egypt from the eastern Mediterranean around 3150 B.C.E., but within 200 years, Lower Egypt had a strong grape growing tradition and wine presses appear in tomb paintings. Yeasts are found naturally as white powdery deposits on grape skins, so fermenting begins only hours after grapes are picked if any are crushed. Wine making thus took place near the vineyards and almost immediately after the grapes were harvested. Some grapes were crushed by groups of workers treading on them with bare feet in large vats, while others were squeezed in a sack press. Since treaded grape juice, or must, contains seeds and skins, or marc, which produces red wines when left in the fermenting liquid, and sack pressing produces a nearly clear must that could result in a white wine, it seems likely that all red wines were produced by treading. It has, however, been suggested that sack presses were only used to squeeze the last must out of the marc left in the bottom of the crushing vats. If so, it produced the strongest and reddest wines available. New Kingdom drawings in Egypt show spouts on the vats in which grapes were crushed by treading. The spouts presumably drew off the clear top layer of must for making white or light red wines, wile the remainder of the juice, with skins and seeds, was dipped out into open-mouthed jars to allow further fermenting at temperatures below 80 grades Fahrenheit. When fermentation was nearly complete, the wine was filtered into closed vessels and sealed with stoppers that had very small holes in them so that any further fermentation, which produced carbon dioxide gas, would not crack the container or produce an explosion. Finally, the fully fermented wine was decanted into fully sealed amphorae or into sealed casks to age so that airborne organisms would not initiate the transformation of the wine into vinegar. Since amphorae were usually made of fired clay, which could slowly allow wine to seep out, they were often lined with resin that made them waterproof and also added a slightly resinous taste to the wine. Information about the wines in them was often inscribed into the amphorae, so we know that wines were often designated by the locale in which they were made, whether they were sweet or dry, whether they were good, very good, or very, very good, and whether they were made from fruits other than grapes, such as dates, pomegranates, or figs. Though wealthy Mesopotamians consumed substantial amounts of wine from the mid-third millennium, beer remained the most important drink of all classes. There is little evidence of wine making in Mesopotamia until almost 800 B.C.E. Wines were imported primarily from Anatolia, where wine making probably began, and from the area that is now Syria and Lebanon. In early China, three of the four types of wine were produced from grains, and only one from fruits. The process is not well understood, but it probably involved the production of malt from sprouted grain that was then allowed to ferment at low temperatures. It was the Greeks and Romans who turned viticulture into a fine art and wine into the universally preferred drink of all classes. Wine making followed the basic pattern established in Egypt, but the Greeks placed large wicker baskets in some of their treading vats so that the must that flowed out contained no marc (Curtis 2001). These vats were presumably used to produce white wines, while those vats in which the must and marc were not separated produced red wines. There is no evidence of the use of mechanical presses in Greek or Roman wine production, although presses used to extract the oil from olives could have been used. Some must was sold directly to consumers who allowed it to ferment in wineskins made of goat’s stomachs. These skins were slightly permeable, so evaporation from the moist exterior of the bag kept the inside temperature relatively low. Most must seems to have been dipped out of the treading vat directly into resin-lined amphorae that were initially stoppered with clay plugs that contained small holes to allow the carbon dioxide produced during fermentation to escape. When fermentation was complete the amphorae were permanently stoppered with cork or clay. Like the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans often inscribed information about the wine inside on the amphorae, but unlike the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans tended to age their superior wines for up to 10 years before drinking them.
OTHER CEREAL USES
There has been substantial debate about whether beer making or leavened bread baking came first in Egypt and Mesopotamia, but no one seems to doubt that a third use of grains preceded both. In every civilization, one of the first and most persistent ways to prepare grain for consumption was to create a gruel something like modern Cream-of-Wheat or oatmeal, which could be thinned to provide a slightly thickened soup stock. In doing so, the first step was to remove the husks from husked grains by parching (drying at a low heat under the sun, in pans over a low fire, or in a relatively cool oven) and pounding or rolling lightly in a saddle quern in order to separate the husk from the grain kernel without smashing the kernel into flour. In this process, the lighter husks rose to the top and were blown off, or the smaller kernels were allowed to drop through a colander-like vessel with holes in the bottom. The grain was then soaked in water and boiled in a pot or cauldron to create a staple food that could be flavored and augmented in an almost indefinite number of ways — by adding herbs, spices, vegetables, fish, insects, or, in rare cases, meat from fowl or four-legged animals. Early in most civilizations, the basic cooking pots were baked clay, but as time went on these were replaced in at least wealthy homes by bronze or, eventually, iron vessels. In Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and probably Harappan civilization as well as in Mesoamerica., cooking fires were at ground level or only slightly raised; cooking pots were rounded on the bottom, and they were set in free-standing rings supported by three legs or on four-legged grills above the cooking fire. In China, three legs were integral to most cauldrons and cooking pots so they could be set directly in the fire or coals. The Romans built their hearths almost at waist height, so cooks did not have to do as much bending or squatting, and they were supplied with a shallow lip so coals did not fall off when they were stirred. In many cases lentils, chickpeas, peas, and some kinds of beans were used in much the same way as grains to produce porridge, soup stock, and even flour. In the following Roman recipe recorded by Apicius for a fancy porridge, note that the grain, along with chickpeas, lentils, and peas, provides the base stock to which other vegetables and a special sauce (to be discussed later) are added: Soak chickpeas, lentils and peas. Boil crushed grain with these. Drain, then add oil and the following chopped greens: leeks, beets, and cabbage. Add dill, mallow, and coriander. Pound fennel seeds, oregano, asafoeteda, lovage, and blend these with liquamen. Pour this mixture over the vegetables and grain, heat, and stir. Put chopped cooked cabbage leaves on top. (Alcock 2006, 37) In China, lentils, broadbeans, and fava beans were classified with grains as fan or “principle foods” to distinguish them from cai, or “dishes.” The most common way of preparing fan was to steam the husked grain or other starch in a special steaming vessel, or zeng, which sat on top of the cauldron, or fu, containing a cai food. The process used the steam rising off the fu to cook the grain — usually millet, hemp seed, or barley during most of the Shang and early Zhou dynasties, and rice later on. Grains and other starches were also boiled in China, but they were almost never baked into breads. In part, this seems to be because the Chinese never developed querns or grinding wheels to produce flour, but even when flour was introduced from the West during Han times, it was almost always made into steamed buns or fried into pancakes rather than baked. Boiled grains and beans were often dried and roasted to produce an important travel food for persons of all classes because they were light and did not easily rot (Chang 1977). All other civilizations seem to have used grains to produced baked breads — first flatbreads and then leavened breads, except in Mesoamerica, where leavened breads never became common. Husks were first removed from the grains by pounding in a mortar and pestle, possibly after parching. Then, the grain was ground into a flour using a saddle quern or metaté (in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica, and Greece) or using some kind of mill in which the grain was ground between a rotating surface or surfaces and a fixed base (in Rome). After these milling operations, bits of stone ground off the quern, small chunks of unground grain, and other solid contaminants usually remained in the flour, so the flour was sieved through a wicker surface to remove most of the grit. Because model bakery-breweries have frequently been found in Egyptian tombs and because bread making was a frequent theme of tomb paintings, we have a better understanding of bread making in Egypt than in any other early civilization. After the flour had been prepared, water and salt were added and then the dough was kneaded either by hand or, in larger operations, by treading on it with the feet in a large vat. At this point, different treatments followed, depending on the intended use. For ordinary flatbread, the dough was simply formed into flat cakes to be baked in a pan, in embers, or, during the New Kingdom, in a special oven. If special flatbreads or cakes were wanted, eggs, milk, spices, honey, dates, figs, or ground nuts might be added before placing or pouring dough into a mold. If raised bread or pastries were desired, either yeast or a starter of fermented dough from the previous day was added before placing the dough into a mold to be baked. Some 15 different kinds of bread were made in the Old Kingdom, while by the New Kingdom, that number had risen to somewhere between 30 and 50 (Curtis 2001). The simplest and oldest way of baking bread, but one still used in Old Kingdom Egypt, was to place a flat, hand-formed loaf into the embers of a fire. When the bread was done, the ash was wiped off and the bread was eaten. The second way depicted in Old Kingdom paintings involved the use of an opentopped oven. A thin, flat stone was supported on three stones set on edge and fire was built under the flat stone, which became a griddle on which the dough, typically formed into a flat circular shape and sometimes with a slightly thickened outer rim to form a shallow bowl, was cooked. More often, the dough was placed in thick terra cotta pan-like molds shaped in various ways, but with wider tops than bottoms. In locations identified as bakeries, several of these molds were placed in a shallow trench in the floor. Cone shaped, thick terra cotta lids that had been pre-heated were placed on them and then hot embers were placed in the trough, baking the bread inside. During the Middle Kingdom, these thick, lidded molds were replaced by tall and narrow thin-walled conical molds. The molds were filled with dough, placed in the trench, and embers were piled up among them without using lids. Finally, during New Kingdom times, bread was baked in large, dome shaped ovens. A fire was built in the oven, which had a vent in the top. After the oven had been heated, the embers were raked, the vent was stopped up, and thin dough-filled molds, often imitating Old Kingdom shapes, were inserted on the oven floor; then the floor-level opening was stopped up and the bread baked in the retained heat. Given the number of broken molds at sites where the large ovens were used, it seems that the mold frequently had to be broken to remove the bread. In the early Mesopotamian civilization, when temples still owned land and provided goods to the citizens, bread making was done on a massive scale. Records from Lagash, for example, indicate that a single milling house that prepared the flour for the temple bakers employed up to 950 workers — mostly women (Curtis 2001). The Mesopotamians also baked flatbreads in embers or on hot stones. In addition, from early in the third millennium, they used beehive-shaped ovens with a relatively large hole at the top. The baker leaned down through this hole and slapped moist pancake-shaped pieces of dough onto the inside surface of the oven, where it stuck. the fire was lit and tended until baking was complete. After the oven cooled, the breads were removed. Leavened breads were baked in large (up to five meters in diameter) domed ovens like those used in New Kingdom Egypt, but the Mesopotamians used them from the early third millennium, and the Mesopotamian bread molds often had geometric and animal-shaped designs in the bottoms, giving the bread an extra decorative touch. The classical Greeks were still making flatbreads directly in the embers of fires and on griddles, which were now usually made of metal, rather than flat stones, and their leavened breads were usually baked in pans rather than terra cotta molds. For small amounts of bread, a light dome-shaped cover was placed over embers until it got hot. The embers were removed, and the dome was placed over the pan of bread to be baked. These portable domes could also be used as field ovens to bake flatbreads. The dome was placed over a fire and when it was hot, pancake-shaped pieces of dough were slapped onto the outer surface. They were then turned to bake on the other side when one side was done. For bakeries that made many loaves of leavened bread, vaulted ovens were built so that their floors were above a firebox. At the rear of the oven, a slot was made in the floor so that the air heated by the fire filled the oven. Pans of dough were placed on the floor of the oven, and the fire was maintained until baking was completed, much as it is in modern ovens, though the fronts of these Greek ovens were depicted as open, rather than closed (Curtis 2001). The greatest Roman innovation associated with bread making was the invention of rotary mills for grinding the grain into flour. A water-driven mill was described by Vitruvius in book 10, chapter 5, of his Ten Books on Architecture. A vertical water wheel caused a horizontal axle to turn; a large cogged wheel was attached to this axle., and as the cogged wheel turned, its teeth engaged a small horizontal wheel attached to a vertical axle that caused a slightly concave stone wheel to rotate over a slightly convex stone wheel through which the axle passed. A hopper of grain with a bottom opening into a small hole at the center of the top stone allowed grain to enter the mill near the top of the fixed convex stone. As the top stone turned, crushing the grain into flour, the flour gradually moved outward between the stones, becoming finer and finer, until it fell into a trough to be collected and possibly re-run through the mill. Smaller, hand-driven mills were used in individuals’ home kitchens. Once the flour was made, it was sieved in wicker baskets, watered, salted, and kneaded, sometimes using an animal- or human-powered kneading machine in which teeth fixed to a vertical axle rotated between teeth fixed to the internal walls of a cylindrical vat. Once kneaded, the dough was formed into loaves without using pans and baked in ovens modeled on the Greek bakery ovens mentioned above, but with a smaller front opening for inserting and removing loaves of bread with a paddle. Home baking was often done simply by placing dough on a tile over the fire in the hearth and covering it with an inverted pot. The maize-based flour used in Mesoamerica was made into gruels and stew stock and it was boiled in water with white lime to make a meal that was mixed with shortening, stuffed with meat, and steamed in a banana leaf to make tamales. Whether it was patted very thin and cooked on thin rock griddles in pre-Colombian times, much as corn tortillas are still made today, is debated.
VEGETABLES AND SAUCES
Except in India, where they were not highly valued, onions, leeks, and garlic were among the most important vegetables in early civilizations. In both Egypt and Mesopotamia, bread, onions and beer constituted the basic diet of working people. Onions were eaten raw with bread, incorporated into gruels and soups to provide flavoring, or, as in Rome, they were pickled in vinegar and brine and eaten without cooking. Both onion and garlic were used in preparing sauces to accompany meat, fish, and game; garlic was widely used in dressings for salads, especially in Greece. Radishes were another root crop that was much more widely used in the ancient world than at present. Their greens were used in salads, their seeds were pressed for oils, and radishes were boiled and usually eaten with some form of pungent sauce or spice. The most famous of these sauces was called liquamen in Rome and garos in Greece. It was made by fermenting small fish and fish entrails in brine for up to three months, after which the liquid portion was used in many recipes instead of salt. When combined with herbs and spices, it was used as a table sauce and dressing for salad vegetables. The Chinese used a similar fermented fish sauce, and by the end of the Zhou period they also used soy sauce, a ferment made from crushed soybeans and lightly ground grains soaked with a microorganism from the Aspergillus family. This substance was then refermented with brine and yeasts. There is evidence in the Harappan civilization that the curry powders, which continue to characterize Indian food, were already in use at the earliest sites (Mackay and Mackay 1976). Turnips were widely used in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, though they were usually a food for the poor or for emergency use when other vegetables were not available. Carrots were widely known but not extensively used, and parsnips were known to the Romans but were not widely used in the ancient world. Though regular potatoes were widely used in upland South America, they did not grow in the lowland areas of Mesoamerica, where sweet potatoes and yams were common. In addition, many plant roots not now used for food were also used in antiquity. The Egyptians fried, roasted, or boiled the roots of the white lotus; Mesoamericans roasted the bulbs of the American aloe; the Chinese ate lily bulbs; and the Greeks and Romans ate a large number of bulbs, including squill, asphodel, and gladiolus. Finally, gourds were eaten virtually everywhere. In Mesoamerica, it seems that they were virtually always picked while immature and eaten whole, while in most other civilizations they were allowed to mature and their cubed flesh was used in many recipes ( Brothwell and Brothwell 1969).
FRUITS
Local varieties of wild berries were eaten in all civilizations, though none were domesticated, but orchards of tree-born fruits began to be tended sometime between 4000 B.C.E . and 3000 B.C.E. in Mesopotamia and slightly later elsewhere. Myths suggest that trees were cultivated at least in part to provide the shade needed to grow other vegetable crops, and it was natural to choose to grow trees that provided their own foods. Virtually all fruits were eaten fresh without being processed in any way, though some were preserved for storage and there are a few ancient recipes for fruit jams, compotes, and other dishes. Apples were among the first trees to be cared for in both Mesopotamia and Egypt. From there, domestic apples spread to Greece and Rome. Exactly when grafting was developed as a method of promoting the spread of selected varieties of fruit is uncertain, but the Roman writer on natural history, Pliny the Elder, discussed 36 different and well established varieties of apple, which were used in a variety of ways. Date palms were first cultivated in Mesopotamia, providing an important source of sweetening, food, and wine. They soon moved to Harappan civilization and to Egypt, which reciprocated by providing figs, which were used in many of the same ways. Dates did not do well in the cooler climates of Greece and Rome, but figs became a staple food of all classes in both classical civilizations. Pears also began to be cultivated in Mesopotamia, though not until around 1000 B.C.E. They spread rapidly to China and Greece and were introduced to India from China in the first century of the Common Era. Like apples, pears were eaten fresh and dried for storage, but unlike apples, they were often stored in must and made into a conserve with boiled wine. Again, in Roman times the number of varieties of pear became so great that the first century Roman agricultural writer Columella said there were too many to catalog. Plums, which were also first domesticated in Mesopotamia, were initially sour enough that they were typically eaten with honey and butter and used as an ingredient in various sauces. Cherries seem to have been domesticated in Mesopotamia sometime before about 700 B.C.E., where they were pressed to produce a thick juice and the residue was formed into cakes. Of all fruits, among the most important for Greece and Rome was the grape. Though cultivated earlier in Mesopotamia and Egypt both for table use and for making wine, grape wine became the favored drink of all classes in both Greece and Rome, so viticulture was widely practiced and many varieties of grapes were cultivated. Perhaps as important in both Greece and Rome as grapes were olives. Though used in many places primarily for producing oil (see below), they were also eaten as food in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome. In fact, olives, along with bread, became the staple diet of the Roman working classes and peasants. For the wealthy palate, olives were preserved in jars of brine, must, or vinegar, with layers of fennel on the top and bottom. Peaches, apricots, and oranges were all first cultivated in China before 2000 B.C.E. The first two reached Mesopotamia by around 1800 B.C.E. Neither peaches nor apricots were widely used by the Greeks or Romans, although they feature in a couple of very expensive recipes provided by Apicus, the Roman writer on cuisine. Oranges did not reach the West until the early years of the Common Era. The citrus fruit that did arrive in Mesopotamia and Egypt relatively early seems to have been the citron, a thick-skinned, lemon-like fruit that came from the Harappan civilization. Lemons and limes were also grown near Mohenjo-Daro, but they did not arrive in the West until they were imported during the time of the Roman Empire. Finally, pomegranates seem to have originated in northern India, but they had become a favored fruit in Mesopotamia well before 1500 B.C.E . and they arrived in Egypt around 1300 B.C.E . They were used in many recipes and were preserved by soaking in hot sea water and then dried in the sun. Almost all of the fruits eaten in Mesoamerica were first cultivated in Peru and then appropriated by other Central American groups. The prickly pear, lucuma, papaya, avocado, guava, and pineapple, as well as a relative of the plum, the pepino, were cultivated in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica.
MEAT AND FISH PREPARATION
Unlike fruits, which were often eaten raw, meats and fish were almost always cooked or processed in some way in ancient civilizations. Large animals, including sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle, were usually butchered before cooking, though for some ceremonial occasions and large feasts they might be roasted whole or without the viscera. Both spit and pit roasting were widely used in all civilizations.
In the first case, small animals or cuts of meat were skewered and either held over the fire, usually by a servant in wealthy households, or the skewer was supported at both ends and someone turned the spit to assure even roasting. In the second case, the meat or fish was either wrapped in large leaves or encased in thin clay and surrounded by embers. Clay had the advantage that the hair and skin of roasted animals usually stuck to the clay, so when cooking was finished and the clay was broken open, only the edible meat remained. Romans fattened dormice and roasted them in clay as a special delicacy. Roasting could also be done in clay or metal pans, in covered pots, or by placing the meat directly over a fire on a gridiron of some sort. The latter was a favorite method of roasting among the Romans, but the flare-ups when grease hit the open coals often caused fires, with two consequences. The emperor Augustus created a corps of watchmen-firefighters to patrol the city watching for kitchen fires, and Roman kitchens were usually placed in separate buildings, so if a fire did start, the principle structure would not burn down (Alcock 2006). Fires caused fewer problems in Egypt or Greece, where cooking was generally done outside or in a roofless courtyard. Fish and thin cuts of meat were also occasionally fried on griddles or in pans and very rarely they were deep-fried. Much more commonly, meats and fish were boiled, fricasséed, or stewed (i.e., cooked in a pot, cauldron, or pan in some form of liquid ) in water for boiling, some form of sauce for fricasséeing, or in a grain-based stock, usually with some vegetables added. Even the most exotic Chinese dishes were usually prepared as stews or fricassées, and almost everywhere when the poorer classes had meat or fish it was as part of a stew.
OILS
Animal fats were probably used instead of vegetable oils before civilizations began to extract oils from seeds or from the olive. In Italy, for example, there was no vegetable-based oil until olives were introduced about 600 B.C.E. (Brothwell and Brothwell 1969). Butter was produced from the milk of horses, goats, sheep, and cattle before the rise of civilizations, but in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome, olive oil became the primary source of oil for both cooking and for use as a condiment.
Prior to their use of olives, the Egyptians extracted oil largely from radishes, lettuce, and flax seed, and the Mesopotamians extracted it primarily from sesame seeds. Olive oil never reached ancient China, where hemp and flax seeds provided most oil until the introduction of sesame during the Han period. Wild olives were probably native to Greece, Crete, Syria, and Palestine. During the fourth millennium B.C.E., they began to be cultivated and used for producing oil in Syria and Palestine. By around 2000 B.C.E., they were cultivated in northern Mesopotamia, though they never did well in the hotter, southern region. Throughout antiquity, most olive oil was imported into Mesopotamia from the eastern end of the Mediterranean, where an important technological innovation occurred around 1300 B.C.E. Up until that time, olives had been pressed with mortar and pestles, in querns, or by simply placing large flat rocks on top of the olives, but by around 650 B.C.E. in Israel, which was then an Assyrian client state, lever type presses such as were used to press most olives. One end of a beam was set in a wall, relatively close to the stone base on which the olives were placed.
A flatbottomed top stone was attached to the lever to lower onto the base, and weights were hung on the end of the beam to multiply the pressure exerted by on the olives by a factor of the hanging weight-to-wall distance divided by the wall-to-press distance. After it emerged from a small trough in the lower stone of the press, the liquid was allowed to separate in a special pot, with the oil floating to the top. The oil was then removed from the top or, more often, a plug in the bottom was opened to allow the juice below the oil to be decanted. Ruins found at Tel-Miqne-Ekron, in southern Israel, indicate the scale of commercial olive-pressing operations in the ancient world. At that site, 105 double presses may have produced 290,000 gallons of oil per year and employed up to 2,000 persons (Curtis 2001).
By Richard G. Olson in 'Technology and Science in Ancient Civilizations', Greenwood, ABC-CLIO, LLC California U.S.A., 2010, p. 183-199. Edited and adapted to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.
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