Stone Age Stew? Soup Making May Be Older Than We'd Thought

National Public Radio ^ | 2-6-2013 | Sarah Zielinski

[Renfield]

...So who concocted that first bowl of soup?

Most sources state that soup making did not become commonplace until somewhere between 5,000 and 9,000 years ago. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America says, for example, "boiling was not a commonly used cooking technique until the invention of waterproof and heatproof containers about five thousand years ago."

That's probably wrong — by at least 15,000 years.

It now looks like waterproof and heatproof containers were invented much earlier than previously thought. Harvard University archaeologist Ofer Bar-Yosef and colleagues reported last year in Science on their finding of 20,000-year-old pottery from a cave in China. "When you look at the pots, you can see that they were in a fire," Bar-Yosef says....

[Renfield]

Ping

[elcid1970]

“Wilma! Where’s that brontosaurus stew you promised?”

[LoveUSA]

Captain Kangaroo used to read a story on his show called Stone Soup.

[katana]

I recall reading somewhere that a native American method for making a stew involved putting cut-up meat, herbs, and edible roots into a leather "pot" filled with water and then adding red hot stones from a fire to do the cooking.

The tendency for "experts" to have such low opinions of our ancestors', 30 or 40 thousand years past, native intelligence and ingenuity is frustrating. Considering the conditions in which they were surviving, to the point of success where they were able to raise offspring from whom we are all descended, they were no less and probably quite a bit brighter than 99% of all modern day PhD's.

[Errant]

I’d pretty much bet you can’t burn up a leather pot filled with water, or even a wooden one.

[JRandomFreeper]

When I was a kid, we learned to boil water in a paper lunch bag. Everything above the waterline was toast. Everything under the waterline was 212F -1 degree per 500ft ASL.

/johnny

[Errant]

You have to fill it all the way. ;)

I remember reading accounts of early American Indians using hot stones, as a previous poster mentioned. Clay pots, fire, and hot water are probably a pretty problamatic combination. Heck, I even recall my mom melting an aluminum pot or two.

[SampleMan]

When I was a kid, we learned to boil water in a paper lunch bag.

For my daughter's science project, she boiled water in a paper cup. I helped her set up a right with a propane torch under the cup.

It wouldn't even discolor the paper. However, the wax coating evaporated quickly.

[Errant]

Or in the ageless words of Ulga the cave wife, “Some people don't even know how to boil water.”

[Errant]

Everything under the waterline was 212F -1 degree per 500ft ASL.

The only real modern advancement in culinarny tools, IMO, is the pressure cooker:

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

“...so that they could have avoided death by protein poisoning.

“The kidneys and liver are limited in how much protein they can process in a day — when more than that amount is consumed, ammonia or urea levels in the blood can increase, leading to headaches, fatigue and even death. So humans must get more than half their calories from fat and carbohydrates.”

Geez, these people are ill-informed about nutrition.

Protein poisoning is almost exclusively confined to those who just eat rabbit, one of the leanest meats, to the exclusion of fats from any other animals, *or* carbohydrates.

You can eat a heck of a lot of protein as long as you have a substantial amount of fat as well. With just a little carbohydrate with some food vitamins every couple of weeks. The end result will be a lean body frame with adequate fat to support the immune system. A “walking/running hunter’s” body.

Importantly, human parasites were a big part of the equation as well in ancient times, as they reduced the available nutrition to the body.

Only recently have calculations been made as to the nutritional difference between raw and cooked foods, and it was discovered that cooking food is very important, as it radically reduces the *amount* of food that needs to be consumed. If all you consume is raw food, even consuming much more, you will still likely develop some form of malnutrition.

It is thus very likely that when humans began to consume cooked food, it resulted in a population explosion and cultural advance.

[calex59]

As long as you keep the fire below the water line you can boil water in almost any type of container, including a paper one.

[count-your-change]

So who concocted that first bowl of soup?

A caveman known as Dinty Moore. Fossilized samples were taken from the shelves of our local bodega.

[762X51]

I’d pretty much bet you can’t burn up a leather pot filled with water, or even a wooden one.

Yep...you can boil water in a paper cup over a fire.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks Renfield. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[SunkenCiv]

And, from a post in 2004, a link to a 2002 thing, “Rumination on the Invention of Soup”:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1066363/posts?page=38#38

[Rebelbase]

“Captain Kangaroo used to read a story on his show called Stone Soup.”

It’s an old, old tale. There used to be soup and sandwich place in Asheville named the Stone Soup.