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.

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

The tale of the creation of the world and the emergence of civilization told by the Sumerians, the ancient inhabitants of what is now southern Iraq,

Agriculture employs 41 percent of the human race, more than any other activity, and accounts for 40 percent of the world’s land area. (About a third of this land is used for crop production, and about two thirds provide pasture for livestock.) And the same three foods that underpinned

for example, believed men were created five times, each generation being an improvement over the last. Teosinte was said to have been man’s principal food

the day the machine had produced 100 cubic centimeters of ammonia