You’re looking at a recreation of a funerary site from ancient Ecuador, where these three levels of human remains were unearthed in 1980 as builders were getting ready to construct an airport at the capital city of Quito: a total of nine vertical burial tunnel-chambers were found. These bodies date from 680 CE, to a […]
Chicha and Ecuadorian Burials Read More »
The most famous meal in Ancient Roman history might be one described in _The Satyricon_ by Gaius Petronius Arbiter. Perhaps a send-up of the excessesses of Nero’s court, the book discusses an over-the-top umpteen-course meal where silver bowls are swept away with the trash, the meat dishes are each sculpted to look like something else,
Ancient Roman Drinking Glasses Read More »
Here’s a cool Medieval miniature of two women playing chess: one is Muslim, the other Christian. It relates to a topic of much debate about Spain in the Middle Ages, which is: “what was the relationship among Christians, Muslims, and Jews living in the Iberian Peninsula between the 8th c CE (when Muslims from the
This is a tablet from Ancient Mesopotamia dating to 1800 BCE. It is a hymn to Ninsaki, the goddess of beer. It is also a beer recipe. Some scholars think that beer might have been invented even before bread – whether this is true or not, beer was super important (calories, socialization, nutrients, safer than
Hymn to Ninsaki Tablet Read More »
This wild grass was of the first plants humans intentionally harvested. Einkorn’s seeds scatter more easily than modern wheat, and they are smaller as well. This plant flourished in modern northern Syria and northern Iraq.
This is a Mongolian golden cup from the 13-14th centuries. Mongols liked to drink fermented mare’s milk. Source: https://gbtimes.com/airag-more-than-merely-mongolian-mares-milk
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Medieval people drank wine, and a lot of it. Some speculate that it would have tasted much worse than today’s drink, because it wasn’t stored in glass bottles, and corks hadn’t been invented. This might have made older wines murky with dead yeasts, and easily spoiled. The best wines likely were the newer ones which
Winemaking in Medieval Europe Read More »
Any gastro-historians out there? This post is about a favorite component of Ancient Roman cooking that likely was as pervasive as kimchee in modern Korean cuisine, and I am talking about garum, a sauce and made out of decaying, briny fish. The picture you see here is of a garum-producing factory in the Ancient city
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Just a reminder — since 2017, the Ancient Roman city of Pompeii (which was infamously buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE) has undergone extensive excavations in several new areas. And in “Regio IX” this week, the first scholarly analysis of this painting appeared, and the interwebs are all a-flutter as to
Ancient Roman Focaccia? Read More »
