1. the origin of food
the early history of mankind is a history with the development of food resources as the main content. It was in this process that a certain social structure was formed, which promoted the social development and created a long prehistoric culture.
There are quite a lot of ancient human fossils and cultural relics found in China. The most famous fossils are Yuanmou, Lantian and Beijingers, Dingcun, and caveman. These ancient humans lived in the Paleolithic Age from more than 1 million to 1, years ago. They were groups of hungry hunters from generation to generation. In order to maintain their own survival, human beings have to struggle with many animals far beyond themselves in shape and strength. Huge rhinoceros, fierce saber-toothed tigers and cruel hyenas were once things in the belly of human beings. Other gentle and weak animals, as well as fish, shrimp and mussels swimming in rivers and lakes, can't escape the search of these primitive hunters and fishermen.
apart from animals, the more reliable food source of ancient humans was plants, which were all kinds of fruits and wild vegetables that grew on branches, knotted on vines and buried in soil. When even these fruits and vegetables can't be found for a while, human beings can't help but turn their attention to plant stem mosaic and choose to taste those things that suit their appetite. I don't know how many generations of attempts, and I don't know how many lives I paid, before I screened out batches of edible plants and their fruits.
Around 1, years ago, with the invention of agriculture and the appearance of pottery making, human society entered what archaeologists call the Neolithic Age. There are thousands of Neolithic sites found on the land of China, which are scattered all over the place, especially on both sides of the Yellow River. In the loess area and loess alluvial area, there were some primitive farming tribes in the early Neolithic period 1, to 8, years ago, which created millet farming civilization. These farming tribes depend on the Loess and the Yellow River, and the cultures they created were named Baijiacun Culture, magnetic mountain culture Culture, Peiligang Culture and Beixin Culture respectively by archaeologists. The well-known Yangshao culture and Dawenkou culture developed on the basis of these early cultures, and millet cultivation is still the main means of production to obtain food sources. The development history of the Yangtze River Basin is as old as that of the Yellow River Basin. Nearly 1, years ago, there was also a primitive farming culture, but the difference was that it was not dry farming as in the north, and the main crop was rice.
In ancient China, cultivated grains were collectively referred to as five grains or hundred grains, mainly including millet (millet), millet, wheat, pepper (bean), hemp, rice, etc. Except wheat and hemp, they all had a cultivation history of more than 7, years. The occurrence and development of primitive agriculture have fundamentally changed the way human beings get food, from taking to creating, from raising mountains, lakes and seas to raising loess rivers, and food life has a brand-new content. With the development of primitive farming, another auxiliary food production department, livestock breeding, has also emerged. Among domestic animals, the dog was domesticated by the wolf. The remains of dogs have been unearthed in most Neolithic sites in China, dating back nearly 8, years. The most important livestock of farming tribes is pigs, and the successful domestication period is basically the same as that of domestic dogs. The "Six Livestock" of China's traditional livestock, namely horses, cows, sheep, chickens, dogs and tapirs, were successfully domesticated in the Neolithic Age, and the pattern of meat varieties we enjoy today was formed as early as prehistoric times.
ii. the use of fire
the original way of eating of human beings is naturally not much different from that of ordinary animals, and we don't know what cooking is. When we get food, we just eat it alive, which the ancients called "eating like fur and drinking blood". The Book of Rites says: "In the past, the first king had no palace, and he lived in a camp cave in winter and a nest in summer. There is no cremation, eating the food of vegetation, the meat of birds and beasts, and drinking their blood, such as their hair. " See also "Huai Nan Zi Xiu Wu Xun", which says: "In ancient times, people ate grass and drank water, gathered the fruits of trees, and when they ate, they suffered from many diseases and injuries."
Humans are not willing to eat raw food for a long time. When they know fire, they enter a new era of food culture, which is the era of fire food. Humans who mastered the skills of using fire, then invented the method of taking fire and preserving the fire, so that there was light, warmth and cooked food. Natural fires were first used by human beings, including volcanic lava fires, dead wood natural fires, lightning strikes and fires caused by meteorites falling to the ground. "
The conclusive evidence of the earliest use of fire in prehistoric times in China has not been found, so the age when it began to use fire is still unknown. Traces of burning have been found in Zhoukoudian Peking man cave site. Archaeological excavations have found ash layers up to 4-6 meters thick, mixed with some burnt stones and burnt animal bones, as well as burnt Pu Shu seeds. This is the unshakable blister kitchen garbage and clear evidence of burning, dating back more than 5, years.
after fire became an indispensable means of production and living, human beings invented some methods of making fire artificially, which can create kindling. In China's cultural legends, the most widely spread story of artificial fire is "drilling wood to make fire": in ancient times, people suffered from stomach diseases due to raw food, so "there were sages who made fire by drilling, and the people said that it made the country king, so it was called" Suiren ".
After the fire, the proportion of cooked food gradually increased, the way of cooking by fire evolved from simple to complex, and the cooking skills gradually developed and improved. At this time, the cooking method is mainly barbecue, and the food is cooked directly in the fire. This method has been used in modern times and can still make delicious food. At the beginning, the "cannon" method was further invented, that is, the food was wrapped in sticky mud and then cooked by fire. This method is still in use today.
With the use of fire, fish and meat with unpleasant smell are first turned into edible things, and food sources are expanded. For example, according to archaeological findings, cave dwellers often hunted deer, wild boar, bison, antelope, badger, fox, thorn, hare, rat and ostrich about 18, years ago, and at the same time, they also caught herring one meter long in the water, and often fished thick-shelled mussels and picked up snails and ostrich eggs. The use of fire also changes the internal structure of food, making it more conducive to human absorption, and fire has the function of disinfection and sterilization, which makes cooked food more hygienic than raw food, thus reducing gastrointestinal diseases and enhancing human physique.
iii. Use of pottery
Pottery was invented for grain cooking to a great extent, and was created by primitive farming tribes. Farming tribes have a relatively stable source of life, no longer migrate frequently, and begin to have a settled life. It is at this time that pottery came to the human world. The original pottery multi-cookers also had eating utensils, which proved that it was indeed the product of the development of diet life to a higher stage. The pottery clay of the cooker has sand grains or chaff, mussel shell powder, etc., which has the advantages of fire resistance, not easy to burn and fast heat transfer. After elutriation, the pottery clay of the cooker is not in direct contact with the fire source, so it is generally not coated with sand, and its surface is smooth.
China pottery was founded about 1, years ago, and nearly 1,-year-old broken pottery was found in both the south and the north, and most of them were so-called sand-mixed pottery. Early pottery with sand was mostly in the style of open bottom, which can be called kettle. The invention of pottery cauldrons is of great significance in the history of cooking. No matter how many times the material and shape of the cauldrons have changed, their cooking principles have not changed. More importantly, many other types of cookers are almost developed and improved on the basis of kettle. Tao Zan, for example, is a steamer that only has a kettle.
in the delta area of the lower reaches of the Yangtze river, residents of Majiabang culture and Songze culture use retort to steam food, while the oldest pottery retort has been found in the famous Hemudu cultural site, dating from around 4 BC. According to the current findings, the Neolithic pottery retort was mostly unearthed in the middle reaches of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, which seems to indicate that the proportion of meals for prehistoric residents in Central China may be much higher than that in other areas. It is worth mentioning that steaming is a unique technique of oriental cooking, which has been established for more than 6 years. There was no steaming method in ancient western cooking, and until now, Europeans rarely use steaming method.
Pottery, which played an important role in the popularization of fire food in prehistoric times, is not only a cauldron, but also a pottery tripod, and it is also an important cooker that doubles as a food container. 7 years ago, primitive pottery ding was widely used in the middle and lower reaches of the Yellow River, and several of the earliest farming cultures all used ding-like utensils as eating utensils. There are striking similarities in the shape and manufacturing method of ding. Ding is a tripod, which is more convenient to use and more practical than a kettle with a bottom.
Neolithic cookers, as well as stoves and stoves. The furnace is made of clay and fired in the kiln like pottery. Yangshao culture and Longshan culture residents prefer to cook with pottery stoves. Pottery stove is a movable stove with great mobility. The stove is a fixed building, and its importance is far above the pottery stove. Yangshao cultural residents living in Guanzhong area have a solid tradition of settlement, with simple houses aggregated into villages, where people live according to certain social and family norms. These residences, big or small, are both bedrooms and restaurants, and at the same time they are kitchens. They have no more equipment, but almost all of them have a stove pit and a few pieces of pottery.
Most of the Neolithic stoves were pits with sunken ground, or fire pits. Firepits were used in the Bronze Age in the Central Plains, but at that time, high-platform stoves had appeared and cooking equipment had been improved. Gaotai stove has been used for more than 2 years. Although the varieties of fuel such as firewood, coal and natural gas have changed, the stove has not changed much, and the firewood stove is still the most widely used.
the development of diet
with the emergence and initial development of diet in primitive times, China's diet had a great development in the pre-Qin and Han dynasties, which was manifested in the richness and variety of food raw materials. First of all, grain crops have been used as a daily food source, and five grains have been prepared as food crops in the third generation. In addition to millet, millet and millet, wheat, sorghum, rice, glutinous rice and glutinous rice have occupied a large proportion in people's daily food. In the earliest agricultural book Xia Xiaozheng, it has been recorded that wheat, millet (yellow rice) and glutinous rice (soybean) are planted.
followed by the abundance of vegetables and fruits. The most recorded terrestrial vegetables in The Book of Songs, Erya and Shanhaijing are melon, leek, bitter gourd, manqing, radish, bitter vegetable, shepherd's purse, pea seedling, bamboo shoot, medlar, etc. The aquatic vegetables are Pu, lotus root, gardener, algae, shepherd's purse, apple (cold dish) and so on. With regard to the richness of fruits, the Book of Mountains and Seas recorded begonia, Shaguo, pear (Tang), peach, plum, apricot, plum, jujube, linden (hawthorn), chestnut, orange and pomelo, and in the Book of Songs, besides the above fruits, there were mulberries, pawpaw and bitter orange. In the Western Han Dynasty, Zhang Qian sent envoys to the Western Regions, and introduced peaches (grapes), walnuts (walnuts), figs, pomegranates, watermelons and honeydew melons from the west. There are sugarcane, litchi, longan, betel nut, olive, banana and coconut in the south of the Yangtze River. It can be seen that some common fruits of future generations have begun to take shape.
Thirdly, animal food is becoming more and more important in diet, which is mainly obtained by animal husbandry and hunting. In Oracle Bone Inscriptions's records, there were stables, but in Yin Dynasty, horses, cows and dogs were classified in detail, and there were various differences in servitude, sacrifice and eating. The jade carving animals unearthed from the tomb of Fu Hao in the late Shang Dynasty include horses, cows, sheep, dogs, monkeys, rabbits, turtles, geese, ducks, pigeons and other lifelike domestic animals and poultry, which shows that domestic animals and poultry have been domesticated directionally as early as 3, years ago. In Zhou Li, it is recorded that the livestock domesticated and eaten by the nobles in the Central Plains include wild boar, hare, elk, musk deer and geese, feast birds, quails and wild geese. In the Han Dynasty, a large number of farmers raised one or two hundred cattle and sheep in the Han area appeared, while ordinary people cooked and slaughtered cattle and sheep on holidays.
The fishing industry of the third generation has also developed greatly. According to experts' appraisal, there are mullet, Pelteobagrus fulvidraco, carp, herring, grass carp and red-eyed trout unearthed in Yin Ruins. And pond culture has also made great progress.
along with meat food, animal fat cream is also eaten. In the pre-Qin period, people used fat, and by the time of Zhou, Qin and Han dynasties, fat had been widely used as food. During the Han Dynasty, vegetable oil was widely used as food. At that time, in addition to sesame oil and rapeseed oil, there were also sesame oil and soybean oil. The discovery and utilization of various seasonings have made great contributions to the development of cooking. The natural condiments in this period are salt, plum, honey and ginger. Artificial seasonings include acyl, wine, sauce, sugar and so on.
The food raw materials in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties are mainly recorded in Qi Min Yao Shu. During this period, first, there were a great variety of food crops, such as 38 kinds of millet, 13 kinds of rice, 11 kinds of glutinous rice and 14 kinds of taro, and sweet potatoes were cultivated. Vegetables include Nostoc commune (wax gourd), Cucurbita pepo, lotus root, Euryale ferox, water chestnut, water chestnut, lotus seed, eggplant, beans, radish, manqing, pea seedling, kidney bean moss, mustard, celery, bitter barley, Artemisia selengensis, amaranth, and staghorn.
Liu Yao's book Ling Biao Lu Yi in the Tang Dynasty recorded the dietary raw materials in the south at that time, among which aquatic products were the most abundant, including mullet, Jiayu, horseshoe crab, yellow croaker, bamboo fish, fish scoop, mandarin fish, octopus, giant fish, squid, stone fish and flounder. Birds are owls, peacocks, partridges and so on. Fruit foods include walnut, chestnut, longan, citron, coconut, Alpinia, etc.
From the Song Dynasty to the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties, it can be said that the structure of dietary raw materials in China changed greatly. At first, this change was mainly manifested in the constant increase and decrease of main raw materials. For example, wild rice, which lasted for nearly two thousand years and played an important role in people's diet, gradually decreased in the Song Dynasty and was completely eliminated in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, while the proportion of wheat, millet and sorghum increased constantly, becoming the main food crops in the northern region. Hemp seeds gradually changed from whole foods to oil crops, and bean crops such as soybeans, mung beans, lentils, and peas became the main and auxiliary foods with the development of bean products. Secondly, artificial cultivation of vegetables and fruits is increasing, while edible wild vegetables are disappearing. At the same time, cabbage, isatis indigotica, cauliflower, loofah, cucumber, bitter gourd, pumpkin, pepper, etc., which have been introduced from abroad for hundreds of years, have greatly enriched the raw materials and taste of China's diet. In addition, among the meat raw materials, the former wild birds and beasts have been gradually replaced by poultry. Fourthly, flower raw materials enter the ranks of dietary raw materials and participate in the production of diet. Various flowers can be used in tea and wine making, such as jasmine, rose, peony, rose, cornus, magnolia, chrysanthemum, honeysuckle, osmanthus, wintersweet, lily and peach blossom. Flowers can also be used to make all kinds of cakes, rice, porridge, delicious food and snacks.