An Edible History of Humanity

The languages we speak today, like the foods we eat, are descended from those used by the first farmers.

Today, nearly 90 percent of the world’s population speaks a language belonging to one of seven language families that had their origins in two agricultural homelands: the Fertile Crescent and parts of China.

Sugar and potatoes, as much as the steam engine, underpinned the Industrial Revolution. The production of sugar on plantations in the West Indies was arguably the earliest prototype of an industrial process, reliant though it was on slave labor. Potatoes, meanwhile, overcame initial suspicion among Europeans to become a staple food that produced more calories than cereal crops could from a given area of land. Together, sugar and potatoes provided cheap sustenance for the workers in the new factories of the industrial age.

The political, economic, and religious structures of ancient societies, from hunter-gatherers to the first civilizations, were based upon the systems of food production and distribution. The production of agricultural food surpluses and the development of communal food-storage and irrigation systems fostered political centralization; agricultural fertility rituals developed into state religions; food became a medium of payment and taxation; feasts were used to garner influence and demonstrate status; food handouts were used to define and reinforce power structures. Throughout the ancient world, long before the invention of money, food was wealth—and control of food was power.

The story of the adoption of agriculture is the tale of how ancient genetic engineers developed powerful new tools that made civilization itself possible. In the process, mankind changed plants, and those plants in turn transformed mankind.

Throughout history, food has done more than simply provide sustenance. It has acted as a catalyst of social transformation, societal organization, geopolitical competition, industrial development, military conflict, and economic expansion.

Even orange carrots are man-made. Carrots were originally white and purple, and the sweeter orange variety was created by Dutch horticulturalists in the sixteenth century as a tribute to William I, Prince of

daily use of a saddle quern to grind grain. Dental remains show th

rachis becomes brittle, so that wh

they searched for food, the people saw a dog coming toward them with bunches of long, yellow seeds hanging from its tail. They planted the seeds, which grew into rice and dispelled their hunger forever. In a different series of rice myths, told in Indonesia and throughout the islands of Indochina, rice appears as a delicate and virtuous maiden. The