On Wednesday, September 17, 2003, at 06:07 PM, Amadeus Schmidt wrote:
>
> Bruce, pans are of metal. Metal usage is less than 6000 years old.
> Pottery is neolithic, less than 12000 years old.
Actually, I have read that there was fired clay for making art objects
as long as 25000 years ago in Europe, but as you say no evidence that
they made pots and cooked in them. Just a point of interest.
> The point is not about cooking. But roasting, frying at high
> temperatures. And with lots of fat.
There are a number of ways to cook without pots and pans. One of the
easiest is to heat rocks in a fire and cook on them. A flat or concave
rock would make a great fry-pan, though I don't claim to have ever seen
evidence this was actually done in paleo times. My point is it would
not have been difficult to cook over a fire even without metal or
pottery. Cooking meat on a stick is easy, I have done it many times
camping, even though there is as you say some loss of fat. That would
have been critical only during times of shortage.
> May have occured from time to time. Certainly not everyday.
>
My view on this and many issues is to test whether a practice is
widespread, if all or nearly all recorded peoples in historical times
did something, then my position is that it is probably a very old
practice. For example, fire is used by all but one or two small groups
world-wide, therefore fire is probably an old technology. Tattooing
skin is also a worldwide practice. I was not surprised in the least
when the Iceman was found to be tattooed, even though the "experts" all
said this was a great surprise to them. Clothing ditto, even tropical
rain forest people adorn their bodies.
My point in this long digression is that there are very few cultures
that eat much raw meat. Yes, we can all name a few famous cases, the
Japanese and the Inuit, and to a lesser extent many other groups eat at
least some raw meat, steak tartar for example. But the great majority
of meat is, everywhere on earth even in Japan, eaten cooked, and all of
our historical records show this has been the case for a long time. It
is not evidence, of course, hardly even a theory, but I think it lends
weight to the idea that cooking meat is a longstanding practice for all
of the human race.
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