Who knows why - it could be simply work exhaustion or general coping with life's different turns and disappointments - but this last vacation I did not read much. In fact, I didn't do anything much because the preferred way of spending the time was just sitting in the shade and listening the nature, without forcing myself into any kind of action. I did suffered trough the beginning of book by Timothy Findley that for various reasons simply didn't click with me and lost quite a lot of time trying to get into it, just to eventually gave up on it. So it came as very refreshing surprise that I dived into this book completely spontaneously in the air plane, on my way to Barcelona. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I have just finished it victoriously and my head buzzing with informations.
"An Edible History of Humanity" is all about human history trough the prism of food. When you think of it, biologically we are motivated with certain vary basic needs and food has always been one of them. We might think about other spiritual gifts and consider ourselves far more refined, full of compassion, generosity, taste and sensibility but its actually the stomach that leads the way, most of the time. Tom Standage whizz trough the thousands of years just to point that these strange, omnivorous beings called humans were always focused on food, food, food and it was way to collect, store, preserve, accumulate and share (or not share) food that shaped out history. First of all, did you know that almost nothing we consider "natural food" is actually natural? Man had played around with almost every single seed and plant under the sun, everything has been re-arranged one way or the another and only certain mushrooms, berries, nuts and perhaps sea food could be considered still "natural" as we found them.
In this very interesting and informative book, Standage walks us trough the history starting with first known facts about humans changing from hunters and food gatherers to farmers. Once the agriculture took over, first civilisations started as well and with them division between ruling classes and those serving them. In hunting days there was no private property and food was shared - with first villages and cities, the one who provided the most food for feasts could eventually collect followers and gain influence that turned into real power. Than the people started to use food as currency and to sacrifice offerings to bloodthirsty Gods - in the Mesopotamian version of Flood story, when Utnapishtim emerges from his ark and burns the very first post-apocalyptic sacrifice, Gods crowd around the smoke like flies because they didn't have any divine offerings for a long time (they sound like vampires to me). With focus shifting toward agriculture, saved collections and surpluses of food (that could be used for business, taxes and lot of other ways that have nothing to do with cooking) created wealthy classes, later exotic spices came in fashion, spreading the news about other parts of the world so we got first international travellers who brought expensive items from Asia and Middle East and starting from here we got discoveries of new civilisations, science, art and voilà occasional new continent. Which than provided plants previously unknown in Old World, like Corn, Tomato and Potatoes - in the meantime they became so ubiquitous that now we can't even imagine how did people ever lived without these, but lived they did and apparently it took quite a lot of clever advertising and convincing that people eventually & unwillingly accepted them as food (specially Potatoes that reminded everybody on Leper's hands, imagine that!). With time food became one of the main facts behind the powers - wars depended on food provisions and once scientists discovered how to store large quantities into canned food, everything changed and armies could move fast without having horse carriages lagging somewhere behind. And finally, the guy who invented chemical fertiliser (Fritz Haber) and won Nobel prize for it, used his knowledge to create first chemical weapons causing around 5 000 deaths in WW1 (his wife committed suicide after that). The story goes on into present time, explaining how artificial seeds, mixed and genetically re-designed were used with great effects in places like India and China that eventually not only stopped importing food but started to explore it. Did you know that on a remote island close to the North Pole, there is a Seed Bank where hidden under many tunnels and doors there are around two billion seeds preserved for posterity and its called Svalbard Global Seed Vault - its a work in progress and it will be the world's largest seed bank.
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