WEBVTT - What Did People Eat 3000 Years Ago? 0:00:01.240 --> 0:00:04.760 Hey, welcome to Science Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio I'm 0:00:04.760 --> 0:00:06.880 More Hit Cham And today in the program, we are 0:00:07.000 --> 0:00:11.119 answering the question what did people eat three thousand years ago? 0:00:11.520 --> 0:00:13.640 Did they eat the same things we do, did they 0:00:13.680 --> 0:00:17.079 have the same taste? And did they consume foods we 0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:19.840 wouldn't want to eat? Today we're going to be talking 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:22.680 to an archaeologist who's going to step us through how 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:25.720 we know what was the menu back then, and we'll 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:28.440 learn about two foods I think you're going to be 0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:32.320 surprised to hear were daily staples. To get ready to 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:34.800 chow down on the signs of the past as we 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:37.640 serve up an answer to the question what did people 0:00:37.680 --> 0:00:45.040 eat three thousand years ago? Bone ape tea. Hey, everyone, 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:49.160 today we're talking about old food, and no I don't 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:51.879 mean those mysterious leftovers at the back of your fridge. 0:00:52.159 --> 0:00:55.160 I mean what did people eat way in the past. 0:00:55.680 --> 0:00:58.600 We've all heard about the paleo diet, but have you 0:00:58.600 --> 0:01:01.440 ever wondered how we know what was eaten back then? 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:04.200 To help us answer all these questions, I reached out 0:01:04.200 --> 0:01:07.560 to my friend doctor Smithy Nathan. Doctor Nathan is an 0:01:07.640 --> 0:01:12.360 archaeologist trained at NYU was also a public educator. She's 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:14.560 also kind of a foodie, so I thought she was 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:17.399 the perfect person to talk to us about this. Here's 0:01:17.440 --> 0:01:21.480 my conversation with doctor Smithy Nathan. Well, thank you doctor 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:24.280 Nathan for joining us, Thank you for having me. What 0:01:24.319 --> 0:01:26.080 did you have for breakfast? Oh? 0:01:26.440 --> 0:01:29.759 I had a toast, but I needed a little fancy 0:01:29.800 --> 0:01:32.640 for myself, and I had one side with an egg 0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:35.600 and then one side with banana and peanut butter. They 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:38.360 got a little at like salty and sweet, and then 0:01:38.360 --> 0:01:40.440 I figured I could use some extra protein, so I 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:42.000 added some pistachios with that. 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:45.840 WHOA, that says super healthy. I had a bowl of cereal. 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:49.520 Sounds delicious too. I think we're out of cereal. 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:51.760 Well, what did you have for breakfast three years ago? 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:55.200 What ear would it? I probably would have had something 0:01:55.240 --> 0:02:00.160 on toast I got too, But I guess what her 0:02:00.280 --> 0:02:02.480 scientific answer would be. I don't know. 0:02:03.000 --> 0:02:05.600 I can't even imagine what I ate three I can't. 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:08.960 It was probably a bowl of cereal. But with cereal, 0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:10.960 that's little hazy my memory. 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:11.760 That's the question. 0:02:11.919 --> 0:02:15.080 Well, that's a fun segue into talking about our topic, 0:02:15.120 --> 0:02:18.120 do they which is what did people eat three thousand 0:02:18.200 --> 0:02:22.160 years ago, and three thousand years ago seems insanely long 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:24.679 ago to me. What was happening in the world three 0:02:24.680 --> 0:02:26.160 thousand years ago? Where were we? 0:02:26.480 --> 0:02:29.280 So, I would say generally, in the world three thousand 0:02:29.360 --> 0:02:32.000 years ago, it was a busy place. And of course 0:02:32.040 --> 0:02:34.360 it depends on where in the world you are. But 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:37.560 if you were in meso America, you might see the 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:41.880 beginnings of the ol Next society and civilization. If you 0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:47.320 dropped into China, you might see the Shang dynasty winding 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:51.040 down and the Joe dynasty coming up. If you went 0:02:51.080 --> 0:02:55.560 to the Mediterranean, you might see civilizations and societies there 0:02:55.560 --> 0:02:58.680 recovering from what we call the Bronze Age collapse and 0:02:58.960 --> 0:03:01.840 the emergence of that Iron Age. And this is a 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:05.800 time where new technologies being made out of iron were 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:08.920 popping up in different places. But some of the things 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:11.480 that I think are really cool about three thousand years 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:14.440 ago is that we see a lot of trade happening, 0:03:14.800 --> 0:03:17.480 and you know, people are farming in a lot of 0:03:17.560 --> 0:03:21.639 places and doing it in a different variety of ways. So, yeah, 0:03:21.720 --> 0:03:23.000 you have a lot going on. 0:03:23.440 --> 0:03:26.440 So let me clarify it. This is still before social media, right, 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:27.680 Oh yeah, okay? 0:03:27.919 --> 0:03:31.240 Or what we know as social media. 0:03:31.360 --> 0:03:33.560 It just seems like we've been on this social media 0:03:33.919 --> 0:03:34.960 hole for too long. 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:37.720 They did not have social media three thousand years ago 0:03:37.800 --> 0:03:40.080 as we have it, But people were writing in a 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:44.360 lot of places, and we do have some funny texts 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:46.440 from various periods in the past. 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:51.560 Act nobody was tweeting thank god? No, Okay. The first 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:54.720 question I had about food for doctor Nathan was, how 0:03:54.720 --> 0:03:58.240 can we tell what people ate three thousand years ago? 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:00.240 I have a hard time figuring out what I ate 0:04:00.560 --> 0:04:04.360 last week. Why is it hard to know what people 0:04:04.560 --> 0:04:07.200 ate three thousand years ago if I wanted to know 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:09.320 what was in the common diet. 0:04:09.400 --> 0:04:11.880 So there's a lot of reasons why it might be 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:15.360 difficult to figure out what people were eating. Some of 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:19.040 them could be more existential questions, like what counts as food? 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:19.640 What? 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:20.520 Yes? 0:04:21.160 --> 0:04:25.320 So, for example, if you get an animal bone huh 0:04:25.520 --> 0:04:29.880 from excite, does that mean that people were eating the animal? 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:34.080 Were they using it for other purposes? So just because 0:04:34.160 --> 0:04:38.479 you find evidence of something doesn't automatically mean it's going 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.400 to be used in the way you intended. But I 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:43.719 would say the biggest thing we have to deal with. 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:49.200 Is preservation, meaning whatever food they had laying around, probably 0:04:49.520 --> 0:04:53.000 didn't make it through time like it brought animals eat it. 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:55.880 It just doesn't survive the archaeological record. 0:04:56.160 --> 0:04:56.880 Absolutely. 0:04:57.240 --> 0:04:57.480 You know. 0:04:57.640 --> 0:05:00.680 Let's say this morning, you go out and buy apple, 0:05:01.000 --> 0:05:04.400 you bring that home, you eat it, and then maybe 0:05:04.400 --> 0:05:07.680 you toss whatever is left over, and the trash can. 0:05:08.080 --> 0:05:11.120 Now if an archaeologist in the future was going to 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:14.440 dig up your trash, and believe me, that's what mainly 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:16.400 we are digging up those people's trash. 0:05:17.200 --> 0:05:20.080 Are you saying archaeologists are really just dumpster divers. 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:26.960 Yes, with PhDs, we're glorified dumpster divers. You know, how 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:31.160 likely is it that apple core would preserve even like 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:33.520 three years for now, let alone three thousand? 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:39.479 Oh? Yes. The first challenge for archaeologists is that food 0:05:39.640 --> 0:05:43.000 is perishable, and even if you do find things that 0:05:43.120 --> 0:05:45.080 could have been eaten, how do you know they were 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:49.440 actually eaten. You just made me realize something obvious, which 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:51.719 is that the problem with figure out what people ate 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:54.200 back then is that whatever they had to eat, they 0:05:54.360 --> 0:06:00.200 ate it. Yeah, I eat it. It's god like. If 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:02.720 it's something they ate, they probably ate it absolutely. 0:06:02.960 --> 0:06:03.279 Yeah. 0:06:03.480 --> 0:06:05.480 I guess generally the big question is how do we 0:06:05.560 --> 0:06:08.560 know what people ate, like, what are some strategies. 0:06:08.839 --> 0:06:12.440 So as archaeologists, we're looking at traces of what has 0:06:12.560 --> 0:06:16.039 been left behind. Sometimes those traces are things that we 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:18.960 can physically see with our eye, So that might be 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:24.160 ancient seeds, it might be ceramic containers that might have 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:27.440 been shaped in a certain way or for certain foods. 0:06:27.880 --> 0:06:30.599 Or they could be microscopic remains in which we have 0:06:30.720 --> 0:06:35.200 to go in and do more detailed scientific analyzes. So 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:38.279 we might be looking at Okay, if we can't find 0:06:38.320 --> 0:06:42.160 an apple, maybe there was a special container for apples. 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:45.760 Maybe people loved apples so much that they drew pictures 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:48.960 about it, even pictures of themselves eating with it. So 0:06:49.000 --> 0:06:52.279 we're looking at a number of clues to help us 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:54.240 figure out what people might have ate. 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:58.000 It's like your food detectives. 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:01.320 Yes, yes, absolutely. 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:03.080 Dumpster diving food detectives. 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:05.120 Yes, that's what I'm going to put on my next 0:07:05.160 --> 0:07:05.800 business card. 0:07:07.480 --> 0:07:09.800 You like those pis that the into people's trash to 0:07:10.120 --> 0:07:10.920 get dirt on them. 0:07:11.160 --> 0:07:12.240 That's very full circle. 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:16.520 Now, as doctor Nathan says, there is food that survives 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:19.760 after three thousand years. You just have to know where 0:07:19.800 --> 0:07:22.280 to look for it, because sometimes it shows up in 0:07:22.560 --> 0:07:27.080 unexpected places. But what do you mean by looking at residue, Like, 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:29.600 can we actually do that, look at molecules and might 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:32.360 have survived. Yes, absolutely, Like if you find a piece 0:07:32.360 --> 0:07:35.760 of broken pottery, you can actually still see the food 0:07:35.800 --> 0:07:37.720 that was there, that did you used to contain. 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:40.120 Well, we can't see it with the naked eye. So 0:07:40.320 --> 0:07:43.320 in the case of pottery itself. You know, if you've 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:47.080 ever taken a ceramic class or potty class, maybe you've 0:07:47.120 --> 0:07:48.240 watched one on YouTube. 0:07:48.280 --> 0:07:51.200 I watched the movie Ghost. Yes, so the. 0:07:51.120 --> 0:07:54.680 Ghost processes in the beginning, they're forming the vessel. Well, 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:58.800 we actually really like are unglazed pieces of pottery because 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:02.600 in that sense you will have food that will soak 0:08:02.720 --> 0:08:09.640 into the ceramic, thereby preserving it. And different microscopic elements 0:08:09.680 --> 0:08:12.760 can tell us different things. So lipids can tell us 0:08:12.800 --> 0:08:16.120 about fats and oils, but we can also think about 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:19.640 starch grains that can tell us about the different starches 0:08:19.640 --> 0:08:22.240 in the past. And this is really crucial for people 0:08:22.280 --> 0:08:27.040 who are interested in grains and perhaps beer or bread 0:08:27.080 --> 0:08:28.360 making things like that. 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:33.480 Yes, you could tell if an ancient culture eight pretzels 0:08:33.800 --> 0:08:37.600 with their beer. Another source of food residue and this 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:40.640 might gross you out a little bit. Are dead teeth. 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:47.520 So actually, in the area of isotope analysis, people often 0:08:47.559 --> 0:08:51.840 look at the dental calculus. So this is basically ancient plaque. 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:56.679 What ancient plaque? And you can look at different types 0:08:56.720 --> 0:09:00.160 of isotopes to learn different types of information. In a 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:02.680 case of steak, we might not be able to say, hey, 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:05.520 this is steak, but if you look at nitrogen isotopes, 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:08.760 you can probably tell if there was animal protein present 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:11.640 or not. So maybe your diet consist of animal protein. 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:15.000 And then if you look at carbon isotopes, you can 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:19.320 maybe get an idea of the category of plants that 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:23.600 person was eating, specifically C three or C four plants. 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:26.600 Well, we can tell what people ate by looking at 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:28.880 their basically teeth gunk. 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:32.280 Yes, like this is often found in burials for example. 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:35.480 Huh, so ancient people had brushed their teeth, we would 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:37.079 know a little bit less about them. 0:09:37.120 --> 0:09:42.040 From that line of evidence. Yes, the people did brush 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:44.680 their teeth or you know, cleaned in different ways. We 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:48.680 have evidence of a range of different dental hygiene. I 0:09:48.720 --> 0:09:50.240 think that's fair to say. 0:09:50.960 --> 0:09:52.640 Well, don't tell my kids. It might give them an 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:56.839 excuse not to brush their teeth. Another way that doctor 0:09:56.880 --> 0:09:59.240 Nathan says we can tell what people ate a long 0:09:59.280 --> 0:10:03.160 time ago is to basically get lucky. It might happen 0:10:03.240 --> 0:10:06.080 upon an archaeological site where there was a fire in 0:10:06.120 --> 0:10:09.840 the kitchen or the food preparation area and some seeds, 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:13.439 for example, got burned and carbonized and that would help 0:10:13.480 --> 0:10:17.400 preserve them thousands of years. Or you might find fragments 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:20.160 of bones or plants that you can then do DNA 0:10:20.200 --> 0:10:23.440 analysis on to figure out what they are, and that 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:26.360 can give you the right clue with the whole food 0:10:26.440 --> 0:10:31.240 picture together. The day day is that you're in archaeologist, 0:10:31.280 --> 0:10:33.840 you're digging up aside and you find a bunch of material. 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:35.800 You want to know what it is. Oh, it turns 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:38.800 out to be wheat or strawberries, and then you can 0:10:38.800 --> 0:10:41.040 tie that like, hey, maybe they ate wheat or strawberries. 0:10:41.120 --> 0:10:43.800 So that's the other part that makes the detective process 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:47.400 a little challenging is just because you find something someplace 0:10:47.559 --> 0:10:51.440 like wheat or strawberries, it doesn't automatically mean that people 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:54.439 were eating it. So this is why it's super important 0:10:54.480 --> 0:10:59.000 to report the larger archaeological contexts when we're excavating, because 0:10:59.000 --> 0:11:02.000 we want to get the bigger story of what's happening, 0:11:02.559 --> 0:11:05.719 and then we can maybe say, Okay, we're pretty confident 0:11:05.800 --> 0:11:08.319 they were eating this because of X, Y and Z. 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:13.720 All Right, now, we're going to get into two surprising 0:11:13.800 --> 0:11:17.760 foods that archaeologists have recently discovered were part of the 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:22.480 diet of people three thousand years ago. When we come back, 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:26.320 we'll talk about the first of these foods, which is cheese. 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:29.840 It turns out humans have been eating cheese for thousands 0:11:29.840 --> 0:11:34.240 of years, way before refrigerators or cans of cheese whiz 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:37.880 were invented. But how do we know they actually ate it? 0:11:38.280 --> 0:11:41.360 And what kind of cheese was it? So don't say 0:11:41.440 --> 0:11:58.800 goodabaye will breathe right back. Okay, that was too cheesy. Hey, 0:11:58.800 --> 0:12:03.120 welcome back. We're talking about the archaeology of food and 0:12:03.360 --> 0:12:07.280 what people ate three thousand years ago, and so far 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:10.320 we've talked about why it's so hard to figure out 0:12:10.480 --> 0:12:14.040 what our ancestors had for lunch and dinner. Now we're 0:12:14.080 --> 0:12:17.079 going to focus on what we do know, specifically about 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:21.079 two very interesting foods nientists have been surprised to learn 0:12:21.280 --> 0:12:24.120 we're part of our diet thousands of years ago. The 0:12:24.160 --> 0:12:31.680 first is cheese. Here's archaeologist doctor's Mitty Nathan. So, one 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:33.839 food that I was really surprised to learn people were 0:12:33.880 --> 0:12:38.040 eating three thousand years ago was cheese, because I want 0:12:38.040 --> 0:12:40.280 to think of cheese, is you know something that goes 0:12:40.280 --> 0:12:42.679 bad in my fridge after like a week or two 0:12:42.720 --> 0:12:45.160 weeks or something like that. How could we possibly know 0:12:45.320 --> 0:12:47.920 that people ate cheese three thousand years ago? 0:12:48.040 --> 0:12:53.320 Okay, this is really exciting because we actually have archaeological 0:12:53.320 --> 0:12:58.440 evidence from seven thousand years ago. What so, as we mentioned, 0:12:58.520 --> 0:13:00.840 you know, you're eating cheese, sometimes it goes bad, But 0:13:00.960 --> 0:13:04.440 like what could be left behind as a clue that 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:09.680 people were eating cheese. Well, Reese's study came out from Kuavia, Poland, 0:13:10.240 --> 0:13:16.120 where archaeologists tested specific ceramics that they thought were cheese strainers. 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:19.480 So they had these holes in them and they looked 0:13:19.679 --> 0:13:23.480 like things that people had hypothesized could be cheese strainers. 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:27.800 Quick aside, here in case you didn't know. To make cheese, 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:33.080 you take milk, eat it up, then add acid like 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:36.640 lemon juice or vinegar or something called rennet, which can 0:13:36.640 --> 0:13:40.360 come from cow stomachs that makes the milk curdle or 0:13:40.600 --> 0:13:43.600 turn clumpy. Then you have to strain the milk to 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:48.520 separate the clumps from the whey or liquid. What archaeologists 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:50.880 found in the late nineteen seventies in a region of 0:13:50.920 --> 0:13:55.600 Poland called Cuavia were ceramic fragments with holes in them 0:13:55.760 --> 0:13:58.920 that could be put together to make a sieve or 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:02.720 a strainer, and for a long time people hypothesized that 0:14:02.760 --> 0:14:07.000 they could have been used to strain cheese, but they 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:07.839 weren't sure. 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:13.080 They hadn't really done residue analysis. They hadn't looked to 0:14:13.080 --> 0:14:16.520 see them, like, okay, are there any cheese residues? So 0:14:16.720 --> 0:14:20.240 they did some residue analysis on this and they found 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:24.440 milk residues. But just because you have milk residues doesn't 0:14:24.480 --> 0:14:28.600 automatically mean you have cheese. So what the researchers did 0:14:28.800 --> 0:14:32.040 is that they compared the level of milk fats they 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:36.360 were finding to modern cheese strainers, and they found that 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:40.680 there was an abundance of these milk fats that were 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:44.080 pretty similar to the levels you'd find in modern cheese strainers. 0:14:44.120 --> 0:14:47.320 So they felt pretty confident to say that, hey, I 0:14:47.360 --> 0:14:50.760 think people were making are these straining cheese. 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:53.760 With these vessels seven thousand years ago? 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:56.680 Yeah, So that was really exciting. 0:14:57.040 --> 0:15:00.600 Wow, So that would be maybe when we can pinpoint 0:15:00.680 --> 0:15:02.680 that humans started eating cheese. 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:06.720 We have evidence actually a bit slightly earlier from ancient 0:15:06.800 --> 0:15:10.800 Southwest Asia where milk fats have been found. So, as 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:14.560 a cautious archaeologist slash foga detective, I would say that 0:15:14.800 --> 0:15:18.640 the earliest archaeological evidence we have that points to cheese 0:15:18.680 --> 0:15:21.440 production is from seven thousand years ago, But there's a 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:24.520 good chance people have been eating cheese for a lot longer. 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:26.160 Oh, we just don't know. 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:27.400 We just don't know yet. 0:15:27.640 --> 0:15:30.000 Nobody's found a piece of eight thousand year old greer. 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:34.200 No, but we actually do find actual pieces of cheese 0:15:34.200 --> 0:15:35.640 in the archaeological record. 0:15:35.840 --> 0:15:38.680 WHOA, what do you mean we've found cheese that was 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:43.960 thousands of years old? Yes, yes, pricologists have actually found cheese, 0:15:44.200 --> 0:15:47.320 actual cheese, not just molecules of milk fad that is 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:51.440 thousands of years old. And this is pretty exciting because 0:15:51.520 --> 0:15:55.400 for the first time scientists can actually tell what kind 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:56.280 of cheese it is. 0:15:57.360 --> 0:16:01.400 So recently there was a fine that so the earliest 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:05.160 evidence of actual cheese, like an actual piece of cheese 0:16:05.320 --> 0:16:08.920 found in the archaeological record, and that dates to about 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:13.640 three thousand five hundred years ago, and that's coming from 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:19.080 a burial in the Taclamccan Desert, which is current day 0:16:19.120 --> 0:16:24.240 western China. Whoa, and these pieces of cheese were found, 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:28.440 I believe it was three mummies were essentially like wearing 0:16:28.560 --> 0:16:30.120 them as like a necklace. 0:16:30.840 --> 0:16:34.520 What yeah, it was a cheese necklace. 0:16:34.960 --> 0:16:37.440 There were other things too, but cheese was a part 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:37.640 of it. 0:16:39.680 --> 0:16:44.120 So okay. And like you found a chunk and you 0:16:44.160 --> 0:16:46.480 can tell that it was cheese, so not. 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:49.760 Initially so they knew it was something. They were like, okay, 0:16:49.800 --> 0:16:53.680 what are these chunks like? They definitely didn't smell like cheese. 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:57.960 They were quite powdery to the touch. They were very delicate. 0:16:58.120 --> 0:16:58.400 WHOA. 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:01.960 The study that was released ten years ago was able 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:05.960 to identify, like, hey, there's lactose here. It's actually kafir, 0:17:06.400 --> 0:17:10.439 which is a common like cheese, like yogurt drink, but 0:17:10.640 --> 0:17:13.600 you can make kaffir cheese. So this was looking like 0:17:13.680 --> 0:17:14.600 kaffir cheese. 0:17:16.000 --> 0:17:19.520 That's right. People in what is now western China three 0:17:19.560 --> 0:17:23.240 thousand years ago seemed to eat kaffir cheese, or at 0:17:23.320 --> 0:17:26.359 least they valued it enough to be buried with it, 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:29.760 which means they probably ate it and not only can 0:17:29.880 --> 0:17:32.920 archaelogist tell that this is kafir cheese, they can tell 0:17:32.920 --> 0:17:35.879 what kind of milk it was made from. 0:17:37.040 --> 0:17:40.200 But what's really cool here if you're a cheese nerd, 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:44.440 that when they started analyzing the different pieces, they noticed 0:17:44.480 --> 0:17:47.959 that thumb pieces were made from a batch that was 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:51.520 just cow's milk, and other pieces were made from jess 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:56.320 like goat milk. Whoa, So that's pretty cool that they 0:17:56.359 --> 0:17:58.280 took the time to like, hey, we're not going to 0:17:58.359 --> 0:18:01.159 mix it. We're going to keep these separate for whatever reason, 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:04.920 and then we're going to put this around our dad. 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:08.159 It sounds like you're saying they were like foodies, like 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:11.000 they made different kinds of artisanal cheeses. 0:18:11.200 --> 0:18:13.959 We can say that they were very cognizant of the 0:18:14.040 --> 0:18:17.080 types of cheese that they were making for sure. 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:20.160 So that's one way to know kind of what foods 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:23.240 they had, which is that in ancient times three thousand 0:18:23.320 --> 0:18:26.119 years ago, people would get buried with food. 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:28.000 In certain contexts. We do see that. 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:30.840 Yeah, they were buried with the cheese necklace. Who knows 0:18:30.840 --> 0:18:31.560 why they did that. 0:18:31.760 --> 0:18:34.240 We're not sure. Yeah, but I'm really excited for more 0:18:34.280 --> 0:18:36.159 research to come out and for us to get a 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:37.560 bit more data on what's going on. 0:18:37.720 --> 0:18:40.480 I'm thinking, like anything, that they were like a cheese cold. 0:18:40.960 --> 0:18:44.320 You know, for me, for something to be a cheese cold, 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:45.879 I would want to see way. 0:18:45.640 --> 0:18:50.920 More cheese personally, you want more commitment to the cheese cut. 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:54.719 Yes, I feel that the cheese was there, but not 0:18:55.160 --> 0:18:57.720 enough where I think this would be like a cheese 0:18:58.160 --> 0:19:01.040 I would need way more cheese for that to happen. 0:19:01.080 --> 0:19:03.760 I see you, I see like giant hats that are 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:07.200 wedges of cheese exactly. And so they found this kind 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:11.360 of crumbly remains with the mummies, and then you did, 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:16.080 like some I guess, molecular analysis or DNA analysis. Now 0:19:16.119 --> 0:19:18.320 I wonder if these three thousand year old cheeses would 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:20.960 be considered delicacies. Did anyone taste them or. 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:24.440 Well, usually if we have such little of an archaeological remain, 0:19:24.480 --> 0:19:28.520 we're not going to taste. In this case, based on 0:19:28.560 --> 0:19:32.280 the molecular analyzes, they fell confident that this was a 0:19:32.359 --> 0:19:35.720 Kaffir like cheese, so then it would probably take on 0:19:36.000 --> 0:19:39.080 the properties of what Kaffir tastes like today. 0:19:40.560 --> 0:19:44.199 Okay, so to recap archaeologists think they have evidence of 0:19:44.320 --> 0:19:48.159 cheese making and region in modern day Poland from seven 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:52.800 thousand years ago. But the oldest actual cheese ever found 0:19:53.080 --> 0:19:56.040 is from three thousand years ago. There was buried with 0:19:56.160 --> 0:19:59.679 some mummies in the desert in your modern day western China. 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:02.840 I guess they were saving this cheese for cheddar days. 0:20:03.680 --> 0:20:06.520 I know you're probably fed up with these a damn 0:20:06.720 --> 0:20:11.480 cheese buns. They're pretty grating. But luckily we're going to 0:20:11.520 --> 0:20:14.159 move on now to the second food. The scientists have 0:20:14.240 --> 0:20:17.600 been surprised to learn people ate thousands of years ago, 0:20:17.960 --> 0:20:20.080 and it just to warn you it's going to get 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:39.640 a little spicy. To stay with us, we'll be right back. Hey, 0:20:39.680 --> 0:20:43.760 welcome back. We're talking about what people ate three thousand 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:47.919 years ago, and so far we've talked about how archeologists 0:20:48.000 --> 0:20:51.720 know what was on the menu, using cheese as an example. 0:20:52.080 --> 0:20:54.280 The one thing you might be wondering about is what 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:57.440 did food taste like back then? If you were to 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:00.679 time travel thousands of years ago, would if you like 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:04.320 the food or would you find it not your taste. 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:07.800 As it turns out, sometimes our chellagists get lucky and 0:21:07.840 --> 0:21:11.040 they can tell what kinds of flavors people were into 0:21:11.440 --> 0:21:14.320 in the past. One example of this is the next 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:19.240 food we're going to talk about chili peppers. Okay, So 0:21:19.440 --> 0:21:22.359 chili peppers is another food that I was very surprised 0:21:22.400 --> 0:21:25.280 people ate three thousand years ago. Not so much because 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:27.080 we've been eating them for that long, but kind of 0:21:27.119 --> 0:21:29.520 the origin of it that was very surprising to me. Kay, 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:32.240 tell us a little bit about when humans first started 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:33.680 using chili peppers for food. 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:38.280 Whoh Okay, So when it comes to when humans probably 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:41.760 first started using chili peppers for food, that's a little 0:21:41.760 --> 0:21:44.280 tricky to say, but I would say most of the 0:21:44.320 --> 0:21:48.640 scholarship is thinking that this happened around ten thousand years ago. 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:52.200 You might come across an article that looks at actually 0:21:52.240 --> 0:21:56.320 a number of sites from the Bahamas to Peru, and 0:21:56.400 --> 0:21:59.760 they did what's called starch grain analysis, So they looked 0:21:59.760 --> 0:22:04.840 at different starch microfossils of capsicum anom so. Capsicum anim 0:22:04.920 --> 0:22:08.440 is basically the chili pepper, the one you probably might 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:11.480 think of. So these are your bell peppers, your halipenos, 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:15.600 your serranos, things like that. So they found these starch 0:22:15.640 --> 0:22:19.160 microfossils at a number of different sites, but from one 0:22:19.200 --> 0:22:22.600 side in particular, coming from Ecuador, they were able to 0:22:22.720 --> 0:22:25.280 date some of these remains which were found on what's 0:22:25.320 --> 0:22:28.720 called grinding stones, literally the things that people used to 0:22:28.800 --> 0:22:32.560 grind stuff, that dated to about six thousand years ago. 0:22:33.320 --> 0:22:36.760 Okay, so this is pretty interesting. Basically, all plants store 0:22:36.800 --> 0:22:42.120 their starch or carbs in tiny little packets called starch granules. 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:46.920 Till plants essentially store energy, and these tiny granules, which 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:49.400 are smaller than the width of a human hair, are 0:22:49.640 --> 0:22:53.240 unique to each plant that makes them. For example, you 0:22:53.240 --> 0:22:56.199