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

How Farming Almost Destroyed Civilization

Famine and Upheaval in the Bronze Age

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.
Please leave a review to help spread the word!

“Cooking in Ancient Civilizations” by Cathy Kaufman

“A History of the World in 6 Glasses” by Tom Standage

Facts and Details- Ancient Greece

The Ancient Greek Roots of Feta Cheese

Explore Crete Travel Guide

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.

AVAILABLE ON ITUNES.
Please leave a review to help spread the word!

Cooking in Ancient Civilizations

The Creation of Inequality: How are Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire

The Food Timeline

“Pyramid of Khufu”, KHANACADEMY

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.

AVAILABLE ON SOUNDCLOUD AND ITUNES.
Please leave a review to help spread the word!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

THE HANDBOOK OF SOUTH AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY, “Plant Domestication and the Shift to Agriculture in the Andes”‘

1491, by Charles C. Mann

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”

FAO: “High Andean Cuisine”

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

The Creation of Inequality: How are Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire

Cooking in Ancient Civilizations

The Food Timeline

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

1491 by Charles Mann

The Lost World of Old Europe: The Danube Valley, 5000-3500 BC

The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire

Pale Blue Dot, a Vision of the Human Future in Space

Cooking in Ancient Civilizations

The Food Timeline

Facts and Details, Ancient China

A Comprehensive History of Soy

Institute of Archaeology: Archaic Period of Mesoamerica

Maya To Aztec: Ancient Mesoamerica Revealed

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

The Creation of Inequality: How are Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire

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

A Brief History of Fermentation

Common pulse crops in the late Neolithic

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://www.persee.fr/doc/paleo_0153-9345_1991_num_17_1_4537https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-the-sea-saved-humanity-2012-12-07/

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/

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/early-meat-eating-human-ancestors-thrived-while-vegetarian-hominin-died-out/

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/