How did ancient people eat pork? Some interesting facts about ancient pigs! Interested readers can follow me and take a look.
Pigs are one of the most familiar domestic animals and the main source of meat in people's daily lives. Pork tastes sweet and mild, and is rich in protein, fat, carbohydrates, calcium, iron, phosphorus and other nutrients. It has the functions of nourishing deficiency and strengthening the body, nourishing yin and moisturizing, and enriching the skin. Today, people can easily eat pork. In ancient times, people took great pains to eat pork. What do you know about interesting things about ancient people eating pork?
(All pictures in this article are from the Internet. Thank you to the original author. If your rights are infringed, please contact the author of this account to delete it. The pictures have nothing to do with the content. Please don’t take it for granted) Pigs appeared much earlier than humans. According to research by paleontologists, the earliest pig fossils appeared in strata between 56 million and 33.9 million years ago. Currently, it is known that there are three earliest pig families: Suineae, Porinae and Porinae. It's just that all pigs at that time were tall and ferocious. They could grow up to 800 kilograms and had long tusks. They were definitely walking tanks and one of the ferocious beasts on land at that time. After a long period of biological evolution, wild boars gradually evolved into river pigs and Li's pigs. The primitive ancestors domesticated the captured Li pigs, resulting in the domestic pigs we see today. Since then, pork has gradually made its way onto people’s dining tables.
After pork has been integrated into the rich food culture of the ancients, eating pork also has a sufficient sense of ritual. Not only did they develop special cooking methods for pork, the ancients even made special containers for eating pork. There is a record in "Zuo Zhuan Zhaogong Five Years": "There are good things for banquets, and there are accompanying cauldrons for dining." What is mentioned here is that first of all, eating pork cannot be eaten at any time, and can only be eaten at formal banquets. Moreover, the serving time must be in addition to the main dishes, which is a type of add-on dishes. So what is the accompanying tripod? It is explained in "Yili Betrothal Gift" that the accompanying tripod is also called the shameful tripod. It is a special tripod when adding food. There are two versions of the number of tripods. One says there are three tripods, and the other says there are nine tripods. . Three of the tripod versions are Niu Geng Ding, Yang Geng Ding and Pig Geng Ding, and nine versions also include pork tripod. Use a special tripod to hold the pork, and you can't be careless at all.
Pork is delicious and nutritious, but in different periods of history, pork has had different statuses. Especially in the Song Dynasty, pork was the most unpopular meat. There are many reasons for this situation. On the one hand, a large number of northern ethnic minorities migrated southward, bringing with them the eating habits of many nomadic peoples, including the habit of eating mutton. On the other hand, Zhao Kuangyin, the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty, believed that pork was not worthy of the noble temperament of the royal family and ordered that pork was not allowed to be eaten in the palace. The eating habits of the palace soon became a trend. So among the people, people began to dislike eating pork.
Interestingly, it was not long before the great writer Su Dongpo discovered the unique deliciousness of pork. Scholar Su Da is not selfish, and must share good things with everyone. He not only invented "Dongpo Pork" and "Dongpo Elbow" named after himself, but also wrote an article that has been passed down through the ages - "Ode to Pork". Once this article was published, it quickly reversed the situation that people did not like to eat pork, and pork successfully regained control.
In the Ming Dynasty, something more interesting happened again. Emperor Zhu Houzhao believed that pig had the same pronunciation as his surname "Zhu", plus the year he was born was the Year of the Pig. Therefore, he believed that raising pigs, killing pigs and other pig-related activities were not conducive to his emperor, surnamed Zhu, and simply issued a "Pig Ban Order". This ridiculous decree explicitly prohibits private pigs from raising, killing pigs, and even eating pork. The consequences of this were that domestic pigs suddenly became rare animals among the people, and their incense was almost lost, so that when offering sacrifices to Confucius, they could only use mutton instead.
It stands to reason that the rarer things are more valuable. But the most expensive time for pork in ancient times was not in the Ming Dynasty, but in the Han Dynasty.
How expensive was pork during the Han Dynasty? The Juyan Han bamboo slips unearthed in 1930 recorded: "A hundred catties of meat cost seven hundred." This means that at that time, 100 catties of pork could be sold for 700 yuan. Some experts have calculated that a pound of meat in the Han Dynasty was only half a pound of modern meat. Therefore, using today's standards, each pound of meat costs 14 yuan. Based on the calculation of 330 yuan per gram of gold, at that time, the value of each kilogram of pork was as high as 115 yuan. This was the real "sky-high price meat".
Today, pork is not only a criterion for whether people’s vegetable baskets are rich, but also plays an important role in price stability and economic stability. So no matter how many stories there are about pork in ancient times, if people today can eat pork, it is the standard of a good life.