When speaking of food in earliest times, we have to rely on supposition. Browner criticizes a widely accepted assumption that the pre-historic diet was bland, monotonous and simple. I find his point very convincing. Man, throughout history, is no less smart, inventive and curious than today and consequently, there is no reason whatsoever to assume anything other than that early man applied all his technologies he had access to, and all the edible stuff he could find, in his cooking. In rich environments such as the Mediterranean and the Middle East, this would have resulted in a varied, tasty and rich diet.Browner is a novelist and has attended well to his text. In addition he reads it out carefully with good intonation and tempo. The two episodes that are available thus far, take twenty minutes each. This is a very good length for a podcast that consists of a text that is read out. All of this results in a very professional and very effectively produced podcast. I am very excited to find out more about history through the stomach.
2 comments:
I completely agree! I am waiting for new episodes eagerly because the first two were fantastic.
So am I.
There is a remark about the Middle-East in the second podcast, I could easily relate to, because I live there. If you walk around in the fields and the woods, you find so many rich herbs (wild sage, marjoram, laurel, anise and on and on). I can only agree with Jesse that the pre-historic people who lived here, must have had diets that were far from bland.
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