General Ptsd And Geekdom (reenactment)

[ihateusernames]

I don't remember where I came across it, but I read quite a few of those recipes a few months ago, @Lemontree. I love old cookbooks and wow, that one's really old.

 

[jaccat]

@Lemontree It was about when humans first began settling down, moving from hunter gatherers to farmers. Basically the act of becoming sedentary meant they had so much more control over their environment, they could cultivate crops in a way they never could before. But also their tools changed. Archaeologist found these hude grinding stones on the site that were used for grinding grains. Before this they didn't have the ability to make grains fine enough and the bread they were making was coarse and contained little bits of grit and stones. This shows up in the human remains, where most have chipped teeth. However, one thing those remains do not have is tooth rot. Tooth rot is caused by sugars, and it is only when these people became settled that the first evidence of tooth decay is found. This is because they had the ability to grind the grain fine enough, to make porridge, and the porridge was releasing the natural sugars that caused tooth decay. But not only that there is also evidence of the sick and the elderly surviving where they never would have before. This is because none of the food before was fine or nutritious enough for them to survive long. But porridge was perfect, easy to swallow, easy to digest. People were living for longer. They were recovering from illnesses that would have killed them in the past, and they were thriving.

There was more. The whole article was fascinating (its been more than a decade since I read it and I still remember all that). But I just loved the idea that this one tiny change had such a massive impact on humanity.