Podcast, The History of Food – Page 3

HOF Episode 8: Hunger and Collapse (Mesopotamia and Bronze Age)

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.

HOF Episode 7: Age of the Aegean (Greece)

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.
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HOF Episode 6: Lands of the Nile (Egypt)

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.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY

HOF Episode 5: Un Otro Mundo (Andean Civilization)

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.
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HOF Episode 4: How to Turn Food into Wealth (Sumer)

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)

HOF Episode 3: Early Farming Around the World

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.

At last, the third episode of the History of Food is here!

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.

AVAILABLE ON SOUNDCLOUD AND ITUNES.
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HOF Episode 2: Gardeners of the Neolithic

The second episode of our History of Food concerns the greatest turning point in human history since the taming of fire. The New Stone Age, when farming was invented and our species forever changed. What were our lives like, what were we eating, and how those two questions are interconnected.

AVAILABLE ON SOUNDCLOUD AND ITUNES.
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HOF Episode 1: Human Ancestors and Prehistoric Foragers

What makes us human? Humans are just animals who know how to cook. This first episode attempts to explain what humans and our hominid ancestors have been eating for the 6 million years since we first came down from the trees, how taming fire and cooking gave us our big brains and human culture, up through the foraging days of homo sapiens hunting and gathering in the Paleolithic.

Pleased to finally post the first episode of the AnthroChef Podcast, the History of Food!

AVAILABLE ON SOUDNCLOUD AND ITUNES.
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