My boy Adam spreading misinformation that Nixtamalization was invented by ancient Americans, when in fact was Mesoamericans who domesticated corn and invented nixtamalization...
@@MercenaryBlackWaterz Not really misinformation if it’s technically correct. Mesoamericans are still American. He never said or implied specifically North American. Edit: Even if he had, mesoamerica is considered to be part of the North American continent... so... what even is your point?
A lot of Native Americans, especially the Pacific West Natives used water tight baskets instead of clay vessels. These baskets are truly amazing and goes to show the in depth knowledge that the natives have of the plants around them as well as the artistic skill to make such intricate cooking baskets
It's funny but...why is Adam's channel the ONLY cooking science videos where I see people make these "this is actually a crazy person with a long suffering wife" jokes? Am I missing some context here? Like, did she divorce him or something?
Just to add: ceramic pots are still used today for cooking all over the world, the use of these vessels is not yet over. E.g. in the USA or Europe they use crookpots made from clay (and interestingly the commonly used Römertopf of Germany has to be watered before use but no idea about what has to be done to prepare US pots before cooking) mainly for slow cooking methods, and here in India many families use still their clay pots for daily cooking of rice and curries or just,to boil hot water for having bath. And of course, clay pots are not only in use for cooking but still widely used in hot regions like Rajasthan for keeping drinking water cool, since water passing through the clay and evaporating at the outer side of the vessel keeps the container naturally cooled.
im from central italy, i don’t know if in big cities they still use it regularly but at least in rural areas/countryside we use it a lot in traditional homemade recipes
In Mexico clay comals and pots are common. Comals used for cooking tortillas and pots are used for specific dishes like “cafe de olla” or Pot Coffee. It’s also known that beans in clay pots are taste more traditional.
Ash is flavoring. In the cookbook "sioux chef" there is a recipe for culinary ash. It has a peppery flavor. It was part of the paleo pantry. Also bison bladders were used for carrying and storing water. No reason they couldn't have been used as a cooking vessel.
I have a feeling that a kid was the one who discovered that wet clay was moldable. Adults saw the kids playing with the clay and saw that it held its shape really well and would start to experiment with it. Learning that it was easier to shape when wetter and stuff like that.
You could be onto something. A study was done on Japanese macaques and it was a juvenile macaque that found that washing a handful of grain and sand in water will help with picking out the grains easier. Adults saw this and started to copy. Said juvenile even learned to wash sweet potatoes and again, the adults copied and even improved on it by dipping the sweet potatoes in salt water to flavor it. My memory is a little rusty so I might’ve gotten some things wrong, but you can confirm my words on Zefrank’s macaque video.
@@kziila0244 There's even something called child culture. You know those little games like "the floor is lava" we used to play, or hide and seek? Adults don't teach those things to their kids, the kids pass it on among each other. There's definitely a bit of a blind spot in regards to children in archeology and such, like some scientists taking a second look at ancient artifacts they initially assigned to "ritual use" and realizing some of them were actually children's toys. Ever made one of those little toys out of cardboard where you draw two similar things on each side, tie strings to either side, spin it around to twist the strings and then pull to see basically a crude animation? It's a children's toy, but archeologists finding surviving wood and clay ones (strings would likely have rotted away) thought they had religious significance for a while. Kinda wild, huh?
Likely the kids were playing with clay and one left their crude sculpture out when playtime was over and one day, that same child or an adult, noticed that it had hardened and retained the shape. I think it's very plausible!
Or the kid was being bad and the adult saw that they liked the clay, and threw it in the fire as punishment, then realized they can make a fully formable hard material by cooking it
Apart from the final line. TBH I think more anprims should give this stuff a go so they can appreciate moving past it. Using a metal pot your great grandfather used is more time and resource efficient than digging up clay to make a new one every time it breaks. All that said; I did like the joke
Something interesting on this: my ancestors (Chetco and Tututni people from southern Oregon/northern California) didn't have good earth for clay, so instead we developed baskets that were woven so tightly they were waterproof. Just like the animal skin, the water inside protected these baskets from burning so they could be used right over the fire. Cool!
Seeing the hole dug for the clay i thought that if people continuously used their pot boilers and leaves in the same hole wouldn't the surrounding clay eventually harden and even get fired?
probably not, i imagine that the reactions of firing clay arent just time and temperature but also require a certain amount of temperature, like browning meat. you can boil meat for hours, but because the boiling holds it at a temperature below where meat browns, it will never brown, whereas meat in a hotter pan for even moments browns very quickly. i imagine the same is true for firing clay, given the extreme temperatures when you usually do that, and that it would therefore never happen thru boiling. that said: idk if thats true. it seems pretty likely to me, but idk if thats the nature of the reaction
@@therobot1080 you Just summarized early medicine or anything almost. Not dying use to be a bigger challenge in terms of environmental terms. We have a competitive one still and you die without food. But collective intelligence and acces is still in progress but has been in progress for 200000+- year with a bit of an acceleration the last 10000years+- and a really fast one the last 400
Probably not, you'd have to raise the temperature very fast so it reaches the firing temperature before it dissipates into surrounding colder earth. The pot is only surrounded with hot fire and air that is much less conductive, so it can reach higher temperatures
It started as "haha, funny guy seasons his cutting board instead of the steak" and now I'm sitting here watching a video on something I never would've guessed I'd find interesting, purely because it's Adam talking about it
There's a guy named David Good, whose mother is a Yanomami tribe member and I think they boil stuff in banana leaves or something. His dad was a professor who met his mom when he was in Venezuela, studying the tribe in the 80's. He brought her to the U.S and she stayed for 5 years, before deciding to go back to the tribe. The woman had never seen modern civilization before yet she managed to function and give birth to three kids in those five years. David traveled to Venezuela and reunited with his mom a few years ago. He has a TH-cam channel and he raises money to go back to the jungle and help the tribespeople. He answers all kinds of questions in the comments on his videos.
I just watched a video of Mongolian "Boodog" and they used a goats entire body as a sort of makeshift stewpot for the meat that had been butchered. At the end you're left with an entire edible carcass with a stew inside. idk how old it is but it's worth a mention.
Reminds me of Kiviak in Inuit culture where they ferment food in sealskin. They cover with seal fat to prevent bugs and sow it closed, dumping it in a covered hole for several months before consumption.
Water dripped through wood ash also makes lye. Old fashioned "Lye soap" was made by dripping water through hardwood ash from the fireplace, and cooking the resulting lye water with rendered animal fat. Adam, you likely have families within thirty miles of you that still make their everyday soap this way. As you were describing the ashy pot boilers and nixtamalization, I thought, why not this way?
Loving this video! I was already impressed with the leaves and the transfer rock method. Then the pottery thing started and that must have been SUCH a revolution for humanity. What I love about these old techniques is that whilst requiring skill, I could probably learn it and find the ingredients around me. Using just my two hands and nature. I would never be able to craft a CPU or something like that. And whilst one might be considered 'more advanced', the practicality and impact of making clay bowls to cook in is huge. I have mad respect for our ancestors for working all of this out, sharing it and working with the few tools they have.
It’s amazing how intelligent and innovative our ancestors were, just like we are when we get into a position of necessity. There’s a video about making knives from rocks and making rope from scratch, and man, if that doesn’t humble you and make you grateful for what our ancestors did to lift us out of the wild over hundreds of thousands of years, you’re just not thinking about it.
Our near-past ancestors were just as smart as us, if not a bit smarter (more natural selection). We didn't really evolve to be smarter in those few thousands of years, just built off of what the previous generation learned.
Always remember they 1) had thousands of years to come up with and refine these process, 2) were motivated by, you know, having to survive, and 3) humans from the Neolithic Age (10,000 bc) weren't that different from us today, intelligence wise, they just didnt have the social network we have today to retain breakthroughs and refine new inventions as quickly
@@Terszel right, but you have to admit that oral tradition did a hell of a good job at preserving knowledge, which in turn inspired creativity and entertainment to make information more memorable from generation to generation
@@MelancoliaI yes i dont discount it. Actually I would say because most of our history was done through oral communication (combined with environmental pressures), we probably evolved to be creative and have the ability to tell stories rather than simple non-truths
I am not good enough at making videos myself to tell you exactly how he does it but somehow this man answers all the questions I would've had and delivers them in the exact right tempo to keep my attention.
For the nixtamalization, you can also get a strong-enough base by simply adding ash to the boiled water. Like if you reused the water for boiling, and had the stones filled with ash, and sometimes even with live coals. I mean, if you know the fire is almost over, and you don't want it to keep going, you could let it consume itself entirely, you could cover it with dirt, you could stop it with water (which was precious away from water sources), or you could put the coals (with ash on them) into the water. And the archaeologists would likely not know, since people also uses water to extinguish the fire, sometimes. You just need to drop hot coals inside the boiling water, and the ash from the coals would turn the water into diluted lye (so basically boiling lye water), which would nixtamalize the maize. Oh, yeah, and maize was the name for corn in particular and corn was the name for grains, in the past, to make research more confusing. Or, they could simply start a fire around a stone which was hollowed out previously, like by grinding food (grains, nuts, fruits, vegetables, seeds, bark, and whatever else they had at their disposal). Just fill the hollowed-out large rock with water and the food you want to boil, and start a fire on a side or even entirely around it, and you have a pot. Sure, the rock might crack and the water run out, but by that time the food might be cooked. And, if not, they might try to eat that liquid, especially on cold days. And there are ways to make a disposable cup out of a single leaf, if the leaf was flexible enough, so drinking the hot liquid while it was still hot or warm would be very much possible. Just google-images "leaf cup" and "leaf cup cone" (which also works with some types of bark, like birch paper-bark), and you shall see how easy it is, and how many options there are. There are even leaves which grow naturally into a cup, so you don't need to do anything else than pick them up and use them to drink. Folding leaves might also be how origami first started!
Hey Adam! You can also make a "pot" out of bark - you fold it so that no water can run out. The soup-water will cool down the bark during the heating process so that it doesn't burn up. - quite similar to how you did it with the raw hide
There is a regional dish in northern Oaxaca in México, called "Caldo de Piedra" it is a Mazatecan people's dish, using fresh water shrimp, fish and vegetables, they heat up the stones and they put them in your pot until it cooks, it has become popular now due to tourism and how Oaxaca has become really popular in the last decade, not bad actually, very exotic to eat it the first time, I can recommend it was an experience one should try.
@@nickfury7665 even the stone soup tale has a bunch of variations too, from different time periods to different objects like nails to even axes instead of stones. But the gist of the story remains the same
I really enjoyed this video, as I do all your videos; but especially I was interested in the part about clay pots. I had put on a whole playlist of your videos as I was working in the kitchen, and as I watched that part of the video I was cooking in a clay pot. I live in Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala, Mexico, and clay pots are still VERY much a thing down here. Clay pots, clay comales (round griddles), clay bowls, clay (terra cotta) drink mugs and pitchers. The traditional food mole (mo-lay) is a very big part of the local food tradition 'round here, and it's usually cooked in a large clay pot (like two or three feet wide) called a cazo (casso). Traditional stews are cooked in clay pots, and EVERYBODY will tell you that beans cooked in a clay pot are the only way to go, they have that 'special flavor.' (I can't taste the difference, but, hey...2,000 years of tradition and all that) Tlaxcala is 120% Mexican, and at the same time the home of the Tlaxcalteca people, who've lived here since around 1,100AD, and there were already people living and farming here since...you know...a couple thousand years before that. This is a place where traditional foods are still eaten (just in this state are around 124 different traditional and modern varieties of corn, 24 varieties of beans, 11 varieties of edible insects and grubs, a number of traditional squash and pumpkin varieties, not to mention an infinite variety of chilies and both modern and traditional tomato varieties including the apipisco, a blueberry sized and colored wild tomato). Terra cotta (clay) pots and other forns are still in use all over Mexico, Guatemala, Central America, and I'm sure other parts of the world. They're cheap and replaceable and they've got the same thermal advantages as cast iron. The glaze has been a problem historically, but hopefully that's getting better. If you don't cook acidic foods it's not so much of a problem, and I'm 68 years old, I'm pretty sure that something else will get me before the lead does. If you and your'n would ever like to come down and experience both real and historic Mexico let me know, I'd love to show you around.
They always say, everything tastes better if it's cooked in clay I'm always a little amazed when they give you a drink like a cantarito and they say yes, you can keep the clay cup
I grew up on a farm that had adobe soil. (Adobe being very similar to clay/brick material; ie. adobe pots.) One of the first things you notice when you have animals on adobe soil is that any footprint made in the wet means you will have a rock hard divot when the ground dries. That divot actually remains until the ground becomes saturated enough, often enough that the clay eventually slumps back to refill said hole. This can take several years, if the divot was made in a place that doesn't experience lots of sitting or moving water. Imagine you come across a nice hole about the size of your fist, but 6-8" deep, filled with water from a recent rain. Sounds like the perfect place to drop some hot rocks and soup ingredience, if you ask me. Or perhaps the weather has dried out such a hole. Voila! Instant pot, just add water and soup ingredience. Now imagine you create a fire that just happens to be over one of those clay divots, or simply over clay, after the ground has gotten wet. What happens to the clay ground from under your fire, after your fire dies out? Of course, this is just speculation based on my own experiences. However, eventually someone is going to notice these convenient hardened clay spots. Especially since many hunter gatherers tended to return to the same camping spots multiple times as they followed the herds.
Good ancient cooks would have used two containers of water: one to dip the ash-covered rock into to give it a quick first rinsing, then the second to dump the rinsed but still hot rock into the actual cooking water. When the first container gets too dirty, dump it out and add more water. It does add to the time needed to heat up the 2nd container of water, but the 1st container only holds the rock long enough to swish it clean.
Pretty sure you can boil stuff in a coconut husk. 😄 As a kid, I remember playing pretend cheffs around a bonfire. We just chucked one half of a coconut husk on a flame, filled it with water and random leaves, fruits and twigs. We also filled it with mud some other time. 😅 I think that might also be a possibility for ancient peoples to boil stuff. 😋🍲
yea because most of humanity lived where coconuts are present and humanity emerged from the tropical lands of austalisia where its native to, you absolute donkey
I think I've seen something about cooking rice in bamboo in Malaysia. Don't know how they would have cut bamboo without a knife. Can't imagine a stone implement cutting it.
Man I love how Adam is a cooking channel and a food studies channel. I love it, it’s like a mixture of Vsauce and to be honest there’s no real cooking channel like his.
6:55 just to clarify, clay is specifically formed with the weathering of feldspars and the mixing with other stones and bio gunk (dirt, leaves, wood etc). other stones being worn down do not create clay, you NEED the eventual products of feldspar, mainly, Alumina, to create clay.
Love how you combine theory, research, and actual hands-on experiments for your videos. Incredibly informative and interesting for the casual viewer. One of the best channels I've come across on TH-cam. Cheers!
Cool video, good research on all the info. I feel to add, we most likely soaked our grains before cooking. This makes them cool quicker and easier to digest.
i have no idea what a baby gator sounds like but i was super impressed w his mario noise and how accurate it was. now im wondering if baby gators actually always sound like mario in a pipe
As a geologist, great explanation on the formation of clay! When a rock formed deep into the Earth resurfaces, its formation conditions, higher temperatures and pressures, changes to lower temperatures and pressures. With the addition of more free water and oxygen, the least stable minerals (minerals formed in really high T-P conditions) are often weathered away. What usually remains, after some time and the right conditions, is a soil rich with clay minerals and quartz (but that also depends on the original rock)
You can take this acidic rainwater, react with some stuff, to make the carbonic acid within it react with some protassium stuff to make KCo3 and then you can use primitive kansui to make primitive ramen noodles with primitive flour and cook it in your primitive pot
More thoughts on the first fired pottery: some firebuilding traditions involve putting the fire in a hole in the ground to avoid problems from the wind, and also hiding the smoke and flames from anyone around. It also gives you a great way to suspend your cooking vessel just by having a stick across the ground level. Just have some damp clay in there and you would get that extra hard pit, from which someone could have the idea of firing any clay vessel.
I'm increasingly impressed by this channel. Every video entertains and informs. And the overall trajectory of quality just seems to go up and up. I'm not a "food guy" in a general sense, or I didn't think I was, but I'm very glad I found this channel.
this video is so fuckin cool. been watching all of these monday videos ever since you started them and i don't think there has been one i haven't enjoyed, but this recent anthropology arc has been fantastic to watch. keep it up!
Can I just say, I really appreciate that Adam is so well spoken that the autogenerated subtitles pick up what he says *perfectly*. I very rarely see that and I appreciate it so much. The video is fantastic as well, this is some of the best content I've seen in a while!
They're not autogenerated - he uploads them himself! He writes a script for every video so it's easier for him than people who go off the cuff. That's why there are almost never mistakes and once in a while I think he'll slip in a textual joke
What I love is that the creation of pottery is really what is meant by "stone age" (which is now a pretty outdated term), but also, each separate society(?) thousands of years ago all discovered/invented pottery independently from one other, at roughly (relatively speaking) the same time. It seems to be the first, necessary step towards "civilisation" (and each society followed the same steps in the same order in similar timeframes).
I am in love with the historical explanation videos Adam. the fact that you try the methods yourself is even better! ever think about subjects like "how we found out that oil can be derived from foods" or "the rise of olive oil"?
when i first subscribed i would have never imagined the content of this channel to become literally food not just cooking it but its history information about it facts... etc. and i am loving it it is so unique and innovative thank you adam for such amazing content
@@extrude22 I've made sahti with a recipe I learned from my Grand-ma. It is a bit of a "either you love it or hate it" taste and you may not notice the alcohol until you stand up from your seat.
Adam these history of food/food science videos are legitimately your best. I mean, your recipes are amazing for different reasons, but I LOVE these. Especially the history/anthropology of food.
I'm loving this Monday series on pre-historic cooking methods. I'd really like it if you did a video on distillation or early methods of making alcohol ✨
Now what you're going to do is to wait _thousands of years_ for humanity to discover metal, advance technology, and _eventually_ enter the industrial age. Then, you're going to wait until cast iron pots become widely available, and with your newly acquired pot you're going to add some water and-NO. JUST WET SOME CLAY FROM YOUR CAVE AND BASH IT WITH A ROCK. NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE SO COMPLICATED. JUST SPEND A FEW HOURS CRAFTING A DECENT POT AND *FIRE* IT. JESUS CHRIST.
Adam reminds me of Alton Brown. His show Good Eats on the science of cooking was one of my favorite shows growing up! Thank you for keeping me curious.
While I appreciate your joke about trademarking the term "Stone Age", I think my countryman, the Danish archaeologist Christian Jürgensen Thomsen deserves recognition. He was the first to notice that the material of the tools found when digging were ordered in layers, and the further down you went, the farther back in time. He's the one who formulated the system of dividing up the ancient past in the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages ... a system that is used worldwide today.
This is so fantastic Adam. Your science/history videos make it clear to me why I love your cooking videos so much. The concise yet in depth picture you paint is a testament to your skill as a journalist. And it transfers so well to video! Thank you as ever, you're a big inspiration ❤️
I am so fascinated by the evolution of not just us as an organism, but how we ate. It really is interesting to find out how we as a species discovered and developed how to cook food!
Thank you, I'm starting to cook for myself and your videos are easy and interesting. I appreciate that each one teaches you beyond the scope of the recipe, so I'm learning how to build from basics
I love this channel. It answers questions that I ask myself. Like what is vinegar, who made the first seasoned meal, who were the first people to smoke and what did they smoke?
Here in Brazil we have several dishes that still require a ceramic pot. It has very interesting thermal caractstics that result in great hen stews, for instance.
I'm 2 years late discovering this. It is so well done, so interesting! I'm a potter and very interested in its connection to the past. I like the theory that fired clay pots came from clay lined baskets, the clay kept grains from getting caught in the baskets. It was pushed into the bottom of baskets and dried naturally in the sun. One got too close to a fire one night and a fired pot is born.
11:11 cracks are normal the first time you heat it. After the pot hardens you need to *glaze* it, then reheat the pot in the same way as before to make the pot usable.
I’ve been watching this channel for a LONGGG time now. I just want to appreciate the work that goes Into these videos. As a science person, who loves to cook, this channel is perfect! Thank you
I absolutely loved this topic! I always wonder how people accidentally invented products with some of the most complicated procedures thousands of years ago (bread, beer, pottery etc). I'd love to know more about ancient cooking!
I have to chuckle at this video, because it really demonstrates the ethnocentric approach toward anthropology. If you examine what many other agricultural cultures do now, you'll find that many of them take grains soaked in water, wrap them in leaves, and then cook them. With the lack of cooking utensils, they were likely just placed on hot stones next to the fire. My parents grew up in the jungles of Laos (as in literally in the jungles), and cooked rice wrapped in banana leaves were common. It was also a good way to have "food on the go", as the leaves would preserve the shape, so you could eat it (like a granola bar) while out farming, hunting, etc. Soaked grains wrapped in leaves and cooked on stones is the more probable / plausible hypothesis here, given it's prevalence in many cultures today.
You know, this made me think: could this be why the mountain peoples in Laos, Vietnam etc. seem to like glutinous rice more than the non-sticky type? Because if you wrap it in a banana leaf, boil it, and open it somewhere, it'll be one sticky clump, instead of scattered grains that fall all over the place. Just a little more convenient when you're having a farm day lunch.
Found a local posting for free fill dirt. Went and picked up a load. Turned out to be almost pure clay😍. So I'm going back for the rest to make cobb, put away for water purification, and make some pots or something out of.
Drog: "What Grog doing with rock and fire?"
Grog: "Inventing nixtamalization by treating corn in a caustic alkali"
Oh, man, LoadingReadyRun should totally make that a Krog sketch: th-cam.com/play/PLV_qemO0oathPXW4hhj1zVKoEMeUjEXx8.html
i just died laughing at this haha
Ah yes, just like Dr.Stone
My boy Adam spreading misinformation that Nixtamalization was invented by ancient Americans, when in fact was Mesoamericans who domesticated corn and invented nixtamalization...
@@MercenaryBlackWaterz Not really misinformation if it’s technically correct. Mesoamericans are still American. He never said or implied specifically North American.
Edit: Even if he had, mesoamerica is considered to be part of the North American continent... so... what even is your point?
Prehistoric Adam:
"Why I cook my pot and not my food"
"Why I season my clay and not my mammoth"
"Long live the neanderthal empire"
Why I season my stick and not my meat
"when you cook pot it no break, can put water, make soup"
Wow this one is pretty good
A lot of Native Americans, especially the Pacific West Natives used water tight baskets instead of clay vessels. These baskets are truly amazing and goes to show the in depth knowledge that the natives have of the plants around them as well as the artistic skill to make such intricate cooking baskets
Baskets were historically also used as extremely fine sivs in europe. To the point where we don't really know how to make such tight baskets anymore.
“Adam, did you finish that terrace?”
“No I’m making a clay pot.”
The internet remains undefeated 😂
At least he didn't set the kitchen on fire this time...
@Alex Beasley perfect. That should be a ragusea ytp
It's funny but...why is Adam's channel the ONLY cooking science videos where I see people make these "this is actually a crazy person with a long suffering wife" jokes? Am I missing some context here? Like, did she divorce him or something?
@@z-beeblebrox I am guessing its the only one where the wife is on camera.
This is how my dad says he used to make food
wonder how difficult was the path he took to school
th-cam.com/video/Ri0VbeNUGhg/w-d-xo.html
@@DyslexicMitochondria Hey bro I watch ur videos. Love your channeI
@@professionaldunce6312 dude youre a disappointment
@@tomhappening th-cam.com/video/9YyTZwFEdGY/w-d-xo.html
Just to add: ceramic pots are still used today for cooking all over the world, the use of these vessels is not yet over. E.g. in the USA or Europe they use crookpots made from clay (and interestingly the commonly used Römertopf of Germany has to be watered before use but no idea about what has to be done to prepare US pots before cooking) mainly for slow cooking methods, and here in India many families use still their clay pots for daily cooking of rice and curries or just,to boil hot water for having bath. And of course, clay pots are not only in use for cooking but still widely used in hot regions like Rajasthan for keeping drinking water cool, since water passing through the clay and evaporating at the outer side of the vessel keeps the container naturally cooled.
Also the tagine of Morrocco!
im from central italy, i don’t know if in big cities they still use it regularly but at least in rural areas/countryside we use it a lot in traditional homemade recipes
In Mexico clay comals and pots are common. Comals used for cooking tortillas and pots are used for specific dishes like “cafe de olla” or Pot Coffee. It’s also known that beans in clay pots are taste more traditional.
"Honey, the new neighbour is setting the hole on fire again..."
@@Noam-Bahar THIS STOPS NOW.
@@gavgri2729 11
@@dailyblankscreen7938 12
Track home life.. "the neighbors are doing stuff lets look"
@@dareak7143 13 :)
Ash is flavoring. In the cookbook "sioux chef" there is a recipe for culinary ash. It has a peppery flavor. It was part of the paleo pantry. Also bison bladders were used for carrying and storing water. No reason they couldn't have been used as a cooking vessel.
I have a feeling that a kid was the one who discovered that wet clay was moldable. Adults saw the kids playing with the clay and saw that it held its shape really well and would start to experiment with it. Learning that it was easier to shape when wetter and stuff like that.
Perhaps the adults actually were the kids before they became the adults.
You could be onto something. A study was done on Japanese macaques and it was a juvenile macaque that found that washing a handful of grain and sand in water will help with picking out the grains easier. Adults saw this and started to copy. Said juvenile even learned to wash sweet potatoes and again, the adults copied and even improved on it by dipping the sweet potatoes in salt water to flavor it. My memory is a little rusty so I might’ve gotten some things wrong, but you can confirm my words on Zefrank’s macaque video.
@@kziila0244 There's even something called child culture. You know those little games like "the floor is lava" we used to play, or hide and seek? Adults don't teach those things to their kids, the kids pass it on among each other. There's definitely a bit of a blind spot in regards to children in archeology and such, like some scientists taking a second look at ancient artifacts they initially assigned to "ritual use" and realizing some of them were actually children's toys. Ever made one of those little toys out of cardboard where you draw two similar things on each side, tie strings to either side, spin it around to twist the strings and then pull to see basically a crude animation? It's a children's toy, but archeologists finding surviving wood and clay ones (strings would likely have rotted away) thought they had religious significance for a while. Kinda wild, huh?
Likely the kids were playing with clay and one left their crude sculpture out when playtime was over and one day, that same child or an adult, noticed that it had hardened and retained the shape. I think it's very plausible!
Or the kid was being bad and the adult saw that they liked the clay, and threw it in the fire as punishment, then realized they can make a fully formable hard material by cooking it
We are witnessing Adam’s slow descent into anarcho-primitivism.
One day he’ll recant his video criticizing the Paleo Diet.
@@miketacos9034 He found the missing piece: In order to fully utilize the Paleo Diet, one has to also embrace the Paleo Lifestyle.
@@commonpepe2270 The paleo diet only truly makes sense if you reject the industrial revolution
Apart from the final line. TBH I think more anprims should give this stuff a go so they can appreciate moving past it. Using a metal pot your great grandfather used is more time and resource efficient than digging up clay to make a new one every time it breaks.
All that said; I did like the joke
@@kaitlyn__L Oh I agree 100%. It’s a pretty childish and romantic line of ideology. But what the hell can I say as a self described Anarcha-feminist.
Something interesting on this: my ancestors (Chetco and Tututni people from southern Oregon/northern California) didn't have good earth for clay, so instead we developed baskets that were woven so tightly they were waterproof. Just like the animal skin, the water inside protected these baskets from burning so they could be used right over the fire. Cool!
That is pretty amazing
:0 oh that is so cool, imagine being that good at weaving!
That's a clever idea! They really did the best with what they had available.
Indians are cool
That's wild! Thank you for sharing!
Seeing the hole dug for the clay i thought that if people continuously used their pot boilers and leaves in the same hole wouldn't the surrounding clay eventually harden and even get fired?
I personally believe that yea, some people might have discovered how to fire clay just because it happened by complete accident
Isn’t that how almost literally everything is discovered, at the very least early on
probably not, i imagine that the reactions of firing clay arent just time and temperature but also require a certain amount of temperature, like browning meat. you can boil meat for hours, but because the boiling holds it at a temperature below where meat browns, it will never brown, whereas meat in a hotter pan for even moments browns very quickly. i imagine the same is true for firing clay, given the extreme temperatures when you usually do that, and that it would therefore never happen thru boiling. that said: idk if thats true. it seems pretty likely to me, but idk if thats the nature of the reaction
@@therobot1080 you Just summarized early medicine or anything almost.
Not dying use to be a bigger challenge in terms of environmental terms.
We have a competitive one still and you die without food. But collective intelligence and acces is still in progress but has been in progress for 200000+- year with a bit of an acceleration the last 10000years+- and a really fast one the last 400
Probably not, you'd have to raise the temperature very fast so it reaches the firing temperature before it dissipates into surrounding colder earth. The pot is only surrounded with hot fire and air that is much less conductive, so it can reach higher temperatures
It started as "haha, funny guy seasons his cutting board instead of the steak" and now I'm sitting here watching a video on something I never would've guessed I'd find interesting, purely because it's Adam talking about it
Same
@@PequenaNoobAmaPudim the accuracy of that statement.
Same
Grug seasons clay pot instead of mammoth meat. Grug is smart.
@@kilmindaro3 💀
That Mario pipe sound effect was actually extremely accurate
Kids are ridiculously good at sound effect. A kid I used to nanny made a scary-accurate tie fighter noise that he'd use during Lego battles lol
I'm pretty sure Adam's son is a bird wearing a human suit
I used to imitate cats and confused my own sister
I thought he was making baby croc noises
th-cam.com/video/YTC75cKzuNk/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=PJB
There's a guy named David Good, whose mother is a Yanomami tribe member and I think they boil stuff in banana leaves or something. His dad was a professor who met his mom when he was in Venezuela, studying the tribe in the 80's. He brought her to the U.S and she stayed for 5 years, before deciding to go back to the tribe. The woman had never seen modern civilization before yet she managed to function and give birth to three kids in those five years. David traveled to Venezuela and reunited with his mom a few years ago. He has a TH-cam channel and he raises money to go back to the jungle and help the tribespeople. He answers all kinds of questions in the comments on his videos.
I just watched a video of Mongolian "Boodog" and they used a goats entire body as a sort of makeshift stewpot for the meat that had been butchered. At the end you're left with an entire edible carcass with a stew inside. idk how old it is but it's worth a mention.
now this is some pragmatic, out of the box thinking
@@borgshadow13 Rather it's 'in the carcass' thinking...
Used the animal to cook the animal
U also add hot stones inside aswell! When my family makes boodog we take these stones and warm up our hands after wiping off the food stuff
Reminds me of Kiviak in Inuit culture where they ferment food in sealskin. They cover with seal fat to prevent bugs and sow it closed, dumping it in a covered hole for several months before consumption.
Water dripped through wood ash also makes lye. Old fashioned "Lye soap" was made by dripping water through hardwood ash from the fireplace, and cooking the resulting lye water with rendered animal fat. Adam, you likely have families within thirty miles of you that still make their everyday soap this way. As you were describing the ashy pot boilers and nixtamalization, I thought, why not this way?
That was what I was thinking when he started mentioning an alkaline solution shortly after mentioning the ash.
Sounds like a new video idea
It has to be hard wood ash
Wikipedia says both limestone rocks and ash were used as an alkaline source
@@gavinbolton9551 Yes I think we all know that but ash is a lot easier to come by than limestone in some areas.
Loving this video! I was already impressed with the leaves and the transfer rock method. Then the pottery thing started and that must have been SUCH a revolution for humanity. What I love about these old techniques is that whilst requiring skill, I could probably learn it and find the ingredients around me. Using just my two hands and nature. I would never be able to craft a CPU or something like that. And whilst one might be considered 'more advanced', the practicality and impact of making clay bowls to cook in is huge. I have mad respect for our ancestors for working all of this out, sharing it and working with the few tools they have.
This guy is so educational and entertaining at the same time
@@MathiasGr. lmao what
@@MathiasGr. do you know the definition of clever?
@@doogus7950 what did the guy say?
@@danni3908 he said "Google search answers make you sound clever" or something along those lines
@@doogus7950 I think Adam did a slight bit more research than just some google search answers being a professor in journalism and professor papers.
It’s amazing how intelligent and innovative our ancestors were, just like we are when we get into a position of necessity. There’s a video about making knives from rocks and making rope from scratch, and man, if that doesn’t humble you and make you grateful for what our ancestors did to lift us out of the wild over hundreds of thousands of years, you’re just not thinking about it.
Necessity is the mother of invention...
Our near-past ancestors were just as smart as us, if not a bit smarter (more natural selection). We didn't really evolve to be smarter in those few thousands of years, just built off of what the previous generation learned.
Always remember they 1) had thousands of years to come up with and refine these process, 2) were motivated by, you know, having to survive, and 3) humans from the Neolithic Age (10,000 bc) weren't that different from us today, intelligence wise, they just didnt have the social network we have today to retain breakthroughs and refine new inventions as quickly
@@Terszel right, but you have to admit that oral tradition did a hell of a good job at preserving knowledge, which in turn inspired creativity and entertainment to make information more memorable from generation to generation
@@MelancoliaI yes i dont discount it. Actually I would say because most of our history was done through oral communication (combined with environmental pressures), we probably evolved to be creative and have the ability to tell stories rather than simple non-truths
I am not good enough at making videos myself to tell you exactly how he does it but somehow this man answers all the questions I would've had and delivers them in the exact right tempo to keep my attention.
the eternal human urge of seeing a hole and going "I should get in the hole"
"THIS HOLE WAS MADE FOR ME"
@@sonikku956 and my food
Humans are cats, confirmed!
DON'T GET IN THE KILN
It’s the urge to hide from religious persecution “we must get in a hole and dig to stay alive”
"are you mario in a pipe?"
"yes"
that is so fucking adorable I'm gonna need a moment
*Mario in pipe noises*
So adorable
@@elainad6728 And the noises were really well made too
Same!!!
My heart!
Was looking for this comment
tbh my first thought was "why is he making the noise of baby crocodiles"
For the nixtamalization, you can also get a strong-enough base by simply adding ash to the boiled water. Like if you reused the water for boiling, and had the stones filled with ash, and sometimes even with live coals. I mean, if you know the fire is almost over, and you don't want it to keep going, you could let it consume itself entirely, you could cover it with dirt, you could stop it with water (which was precious away from water sources), or you could put the coals (with ash on them) into the water. And the archaeologists would likely not know, since people also uses water to extinguish the fire, sometimes. You just need to drop hot coals inside the boiling water, and the ash from the coals would turn the water into diluted lye (so basically boiling lye water), which would nixtamalize the maize. Oh, yeah, and maize was the name for corn in particular and corn was the name for grains, in the past, to make research more confusing. Or, they could simply start a fire around a stone which was hollowed out previously, like by grinding food (grains, nuts, fruits, vegetables, seeds, bark, and whatever else they had at their disposal).
Just fill the hollowed-out large rock with water and the food you want to boil, and start a fire on a side or even entirely around it, and you have a pot. Sure, the rock might crack and the water run out, but by that time the food might be cooked. And, if not, they might try to eat that liquid, especially on cold days. And there are ways to make a disposable cup out of a single leaf, if the leaf was flexible enough, so drinking the hot liquid while it was still hot or warm would be very much possible. Just google-images "leaf cup" and "leaf cup cone" (which also works with some types of bark, like birch paper-bark), and you shall see how easy it is, and how many options there are. There are even leaves which grow naturally into a cup, so you don't need to do anything else than pick them up and use them to drink. Folding leaves might also be how origami first started!
Damn this is some sweet archaeology content
Best crossover of the century
e
Archaeology of cuisine seems like a great topic
@@auliafajar9346 Max Miller makes good historical cooking videos.
Lol I knew I would find Stefan in this comment section
This is a brilliant idea for a video
i read it as flavor flav and I was so confused for half a second
"how people first..." is a great idea
kay
@@neldormiveglia1312 flavalolflab
Hi nice to see you here :)
Hey Adam! You can also make a "pot" out of bark - you fold it so that no water can run out.
The soup-water will cool down the bark during the heating process so that it doesn't burn up.
- quite similar to how you did it with the raw hide
Can we take a moment to appreciate that the kid has a pretty good sound effect going on? That clip was cute
Super cute like a baby alligator
ALL exactly what i was thinking!
There is a regional dish in northern Oaxaca in México, called "Caldo de Piedra" it is a Mazatecan people's dish, using fresh water shrimp, fish and vegetables, they heat up the stones and they put them in your pot until it cooks, it has become popular now due to tourism and how Oaxaca has become really popular in the last decade, not bad actually, very exotic to eat it the first time, I can recommend it was an experience one should try.
And the literal translation would be "Stone Soup" or "Stone Broth".
There are multiple dishes called "stone soup" or some variation on it around the world. There is even a folk story on it.
haha what a coincidence i just watched Mark Wiens visit Oaxaca from a video 3 years ago
In Portugal we have something called "sopa da pedra" (== rock soup) but as far as I know it doesn't have any rocks in it 😅
@@nickfury7665 even the stone soup tale has a bunch of variations too, from different time periods to different objects like nails to even axes instead of stones.
But the gist of the story remains the same
I really enjoyed this video, as I do all your videos; but especially I was interested in the part about clay pots. I had put on a whole playlist of your videos as I was working in the kitchen, and as I watched that part of the video I was cooking in a clay pot. I live in Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala, Mexico, and clay pots are still VERY much a thing down here. Clay pots, clay comales (round griddles), clay bowls, clay (terra cotta) drink mugs and pitchers. The traditional food mole (mo-lay) is a very big part of the local food tradition 'round here, and it's usually cooked in a large clay pot (like two or three feet wide) called a cazo (casso). Traditional stews are cooked in clay pots, and EVERYBODY will tell you that beans cooked in a clay pot are the only way to go, they have that 'special flavor.' (I can't taste the difference, but, hey...2,000 years of tradition and all that)
Tlaxcala is 120% Mexican, and at the same time the home of the Tlaxcalteca people, who've lived here since around 1,100AD, and there were already people living and farming here since...you know...a couple thousand years before that. This is a place where traditional foods are still eaten (just in this state are around 124 different traditional and modern varieties of corn, 24 varieties of beans, 11 varieties of edible insects and grubs, a number of traditional squash and pumpkin varieties, not to mention an infinite variety of chilies and both modern and traditional tomato varieties including the apipisco, a blueberry sized and colored wild tomato).
Terra cotta (clay) pots and other forns are still in use all over Mexico, Guatemala, Central America, and I'm sure other parts of the world. They're cheap and replaceable and they've got the same thermal advantages as cast iron. The glaze has been a problem historically, but hopefully that's getting better. If you don't cook acidic foods it's not so much of a problem, and I'm 68 years old, I'm pretty sure that something else will get me before the lead does.
If you and your'n would ever like to come down and experience both real and historic Mexico let me know, I'd love to show you around.
They always say, everything tastes better if it's cooked in clay
I'm always a little amazed when they give you a drink like a cantarito and they say yes, you can keep the clay cup
At this point Adam should just collaborate with How to Make Everything.
He could help them on some of the food videos lol
Funny i just got in to that channel and now Adam is covering this.
that or Primitive Technology
@@Vainglory14 This is starting to sound like the TH-cam Cinematic Universe.
And HowToBasic
“In the beginning, there was no soup…” genesis 1:1
White wine
@ཧཱུཾ AMOGUS
@@simaguang7758 shut up
Ramsays 1:1
@@joaquininigoburgos7912 sus
I grew up on a farm that had adobe soil. (Adobe being very similar to clay/brick material; ie. adobe pots.) One of the first things you notice when you have animals on adobe soil is that any footprint made in the wet means you will have a rock hard divot when the ground dries. That divot actually remains until the ground becomes saturated enough, often enough that the clay eventually slumps back to refill said hole. This can take several years, if the divot was made in a place that doesn't experience lots of sitting or moving water.
Imagine you come across a nice hole about the size of your fist, but 6-8" deep, filled with water from a recent rain. Sounds like the perfect place to drop some hot rocks and soup ingredience, if you ask me. Or perhaps the weather has dried out such a hole. Voila! Instant pot, just add water and soup ingredience.
Now imagine you create a fire that just happens to be over one of those clay divots, or simply over clay, after the ground has gotten wet. What happens to the clay ground from under your fire, after your fire dies out?
Of course, this is just speculation based on my own experiences. However, eventually someone is going to notice these convenient hardened clay spots. Especially since many hunter gatherers tended to return to the same camping spots multiple times as they followed the herds.
Good ancient cooks would have used two containers of water: one to dip the ash-covered rock into to give it a quick first rinsing, then the second to dump the rinsed but still hot rock into the actual cooking water. When the first container gets too dirty, dump it out and add more water. It does add to the time needed to heat up the 2nd container of water, but the 1st container only holds the rock long enough to swish it clean.
I'd imagine at least two people would be involved in swapping the rocks back and forth, so it wouldnt even take as long as Adam says
"Are you Mario in the pipe?"
*yes*
th-cam.com/video/Ri0VbeNUGhg/w-d-xo.html
Ew furry
Oh sweet, a furry
Absolute chad
Timestamp
Pretty sure you can boil stuff in a coconut husk. 😄 As a kid, I remember playing pretend cheffs around a bonfire. We just chucked one half of a coconut husk on a flame, filled it with water and random leaves, fruits and twigs. We also filled it with mud some other time. 😅 I think that might also be a possibility for ancient peoples to boil stuff. 😋🍲
yea because most of humanity lived where coconuts are present and humanity emerged from the tropical lands of austalisia where its native to, you absolute donkey
I think I've seen something about cooking rice in bamboo in Malaysia. Don't know how they would have cut bamboo without a knife. Can't imagine a stone implement cutting it.
Man I love how Adam is a cooking channel and a food studies channel. I love it, it’s like a mixture of Vsauce and to be honest there’s no real cooking channel like his.
Vsauce and Internet Shaquille
Alton Brown used to do similar content. But Adam is very in depth and historical
6:55 just to clarify, clay is specifically formed with the weathering of feldspars and the mixing with other stones and bio gunk (dirt, leaves, wood etc).
other stones being worn down do not create clay, you NEED the eventual products of feldspar, mainly, Alumina, to create clay.
Woah this is super interesting! Thanks 👍
Thanks dead trees for clay
As an archaeologist, I have to say that this is great content! Well done 👍🏻
“This is at least one of the ways people simmered food for thousands of years”
Geez it took thousands of years to make?
Otherwise it's not a real reduction
And that’s just the chili at Wendy’s.
Better be some damn good stew.
@@kane2742 Ramsay said it was bland
@@virtualabc7847 Ramsay is a munga munga
Love how you combine theory, research, and actual hands-on experiments for your videos. Incredibly informative and interesting for the casual viewer. One of the best channels I've come across on TH-cam. Cheers!
I’ve watched and loved your videos for about a year and then you went and made a Dead Kennedy’s pun and made it so much better
"I added some rain water. The acidity adds a kind of freshness. And for the bits of rock and ash, Heterogeneity!"
h e t e r o g e n e i t y
"Rain is acidic" Adam starts only drinking rainwater from now on
Sorry for this unrelevant comment but Pepege
@@belonn6121 Pepege
*_ACIDITY_*
@@sakminis Pepege Clap
If you drink from a puddle though, there might be crunchy rocks and squishy little worms. *HETEROGENEITY*
Cool video, good research on all the info.
I feel to add, we most likely soaked our grains before cooking. This makes them cool quicker and easier to digest.
Your kid's mario impression sounds just like a baby gator, that's adorable.
I thought it was a really good "Mario sinks down the pipe"- sound. But I agree to some degree to your interpretation too. :D
i have no idea what a baby gator sounds like but i was super impressed w his mario noise and how accurate it was. now im wondering if baby gators actually always sound like mario in a pipe
@@user-ze7sj4qy6q they sound like a star wars laser sound but cuter (atleast theybsound like that to me)
7:46 the Italian blood never lost it's force in the family
Your script is just so precise and accurate.....just satisfying to watch and listen.
As a geologist, great explanation on the formation of clay!
When a rock formed deep into the Earth resurfaces, its formation conditions, higher temperatures and pressures, changes to lower temperatures and pressures. With the addition of more free water and oxygen, the least stable minerals (minerals formed in really high T-P conditions) are often weathered away. What usually remains, after some time and the right conditions, is a soil rich with clay minerals and quartz (but that also depends on the original rock)
orthoclase feldspar moments
what are T-P conditions?
"Rain is slightly acidic"
Countdown to recipes using rainwater
"Why I deglaze my pan with rainwater and not white wine"
Adam substitutes tomato paste with riverside clay
You can take this acidic rainwater, react with some stuff, to make the carbonic acid within it react with some protassium stuff to make KCo3 and then you can use primitive kansui to make primitive ramen noodles with primitive flour and cook it in your primitive pot
More thoughts on the first fired pottery: some firebuilding traditions involve putting the fire in a hole in the ground to avoid problems from the wind, and also hiding the smoke and flames from anyone around. It also gives you a great way to suspend your cooking vessel just by having a stick across the ground level. Just have some damp clay in there and you would get that extra hard pit, from which someone could have the idea of firing any clay vessel.
I'm increasingly impressed by this channel. Every video entertains and informs. And the overall trajectory of quality just seems to go up and up.
I'm not a "food guy" in a general sense, or I didn't think I was, but I'm very glad I found this channel.
"Are you mario in the pipe?"
"Yes."
An exact conversation I've had with my kid, with the same hat on.
After watching this video? During your traditional post-video cosplay session?
Why i season my river stones and not my banana leaf
this video is so fuckin cool. been watching all of these monday videos ever since you started them and i don't think there has been one i haven't enjoyed, but this recent anthropology arc has been fantastic to watch. keep it up!
Can I just say, I really appreciate that Adam is so well spoken that the autogenerated subtitles pick up what he says *perfectly*. I very rarely see that and I appreciate it so much.
The video is fantastic as well, this is some of the best content I've seen in a while!
They're not autogenerated - he uploads them himself! He writes a script for every video so it's easier for him than people who go off the cuff. That's why there are almost never mistakes and once in a while I think he'll slip in a textual joke
@@HessianHunter Wow, I didn't know that! That's even more awesome.
If Adam ever does a collab with Ann Reardon, everyone's cooking knowledge will expand by leaps and bounds out of one video.
omg fr
best duo
Oh my... that would do it
What I love is that the creation of pottery is really what is meant by "stone age" (which is now a pretty outdated term), but also, each separate society(?) thousands of years ago all discovered/invented pottery independently from one other, at roughly (relatively speaking) the same time. It seems to be the first, necessary step towards "civilisation" (and each society followed the same steps in the same order in similar timeframes).
Aliens
@@marinocortina9854 Of course aliens don't have to do with it. Is very likely they started using clay as a way to store food.
@@marinocortina9854 Can we please achieve something without some white man-stand in benevolently give technology to "backward people"
@@rxvyy Indeed, but most people would strongly argue that those 'gods' were very human.
@@marinocortina9854 hah aliens they shouldve given us more sophiscated cooking tools than frickin clay pots 😂
I am in love with the historical explanation videos Adam. the fact that you try the methods yourself is even better! ever think about subjects like "how we found out that oil can be derived from foods" or "the rise of olive oil"?
!!!
man this show just gets better and better. I love the evolution of the content!
when i first subscribed i would have never imagined the content of this channel to become literally food not just cooking it but its history information about it facts... etc. and i am loving it it is so unique and innovative thank you adam for such amazing content
"Why i season my rock, not my soup."
Stone-soup story anyone?
Thank you for the daily dose of gratitude I received by looking around me and my kitchen to see how far our people have come!
I'm Finnish. Pot-boiling is still used here when making an old-style beer called Sahti.
I tired sathi in Helsinki. The flavour is… surprising
@@extrude22 I've made sahti with a recipe I learned from my Grand-ma. It is a bit of a "either you love it or hate it" taste and you may not notice the alcohol until you stand up from your seat.
Adam these history of food/food science videos are legitimately your best. I mean, your recipes are amazing for different reasons, but I LOVE these. Especially the history/anthropology of food.
I love these classic adam videos. So informative, well edited, and timeless
I'm loving this Monday series on pre-historic cooking methods. I'd really like it if you did a video on distillation or early methods of making alcohol ✨
THEY JUST STUCK IT IN A POT AND BOILED IT!!!
IN A CAVE! WITH A BOX OF SCRAPS!
Hahaa from the veggie soup video
NOOOO I MUST FIND AN EASIER WAY FOR THE *HOME COOK*
Now what you're going to do is to wait _thousands of years_ for humanity to discover metal, advance technology, and _eventually_ enter the industrial age. Then, you're going to wait until cast iron pots become widely available, and with your newly acquired pot you're going to add some water and-NO. JUST WET SOME CLAY FROM YOUR CAVE AND BASH IT WITH A ROCK. NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO BE SO COMPLICATED. JUST SPEND A FEW HOURS CRAFTING A DECENT POT AND *FIRE* IT. JESUS CHRIST.
@@musman9853 I understood that reference :P
Adam reminds me of Alton Brown. His show Good Eats on the science of cooking was one of my favorite shows growing up! Thank you for keeping me curious.
While I appreciate your joke about trademarking the term "Stone Age", I think my countryman, the Danish archaeologist Christian Jürgensen Thomsen deserves recognition. He was the first to notice that the material of the tools found when digging were ordered in layers, and the further down you went, the farther back in time.
He's the one who formulated the system of dividing up the ancient past in the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages ... a system that is used worldwide today.
yes
+
This is so fantastic Adam. Your science/history videos make it clear to me why I love your cooking videos so much. The concise yet in depth picture you paint is a testament to your skill as a journalist. And it transfers so well to video!
Thank you as ever, you're a big inspiration ❤️
I love this style of documentary and archeological content, thanks Adam!
Dead Kennedy's reference! You got Jello in your soup. Good job, Adam.
YEAH LETS GOOOO
Why I season my neutron bombs and not my poor people.
Came here to see if anyone noticed!
Why I season my rotting vegetables, not my fresh fruit.
The quality of these videos always suprise me. Consistently extremely interesting and informative
I am so fascinated by the evolution of not just us as an organism, but how we ate. It really is interesting to find out how we as a species discovered and developed how to cook food!
Can we just appreciate his commitment to make this single video like holyshit that is so much effort and discomfort for me if i was the one doing it
I love these "history of cooking" videos you're doing recently. Keep it up!
Thank you, I'm starting to cook for myself and your videos are easy and interesting. I appreciate that each one teaches you beyond the scope of the recipe, so I'm learning how to build from basics
I love this channel. It answers questions that I ask myself. Like what is vinegar, who made the first seasoned meal, who were the first people to smoke and what did they smoke?
You outdid yourself with the cinematography in this one Adam. Great Video!
Here in Brazil we have several dishes that still require a ceramic pot. It has very interesting thermal caractstics that result in great hen stews, for instance.
Hi Adam. Thanks for all the awesome videos and for helping me reevaluate my approach to food and cooking
*Adam says Homo Erectus*
YTP Editors: ''Its my time to shine''
CALLANCE IS GONNA LOVE THIS probably just as much as his hot Italian sausage
low hanging fruit
Well, now that you mentioned it...
@@CallenceGaming Looking forward to seeing it ;)
I'm 2 years late discovering this. It is so well done, so interesting!
I'm a potter and very interested in its connection to the past. I like the theory that fired clay pots came from clay lined baskets, the clay kept grains from getting caught in the baskets. It was pushed into the bottom of baskets and dried naturally in the sun. One got too close to a fire one night and a fired pot is born.
Man, this channel went from a recipe channel to a full out science food stuff, I love it
11:11 cracks are normal the first time you heat it. After the pot hardens you need to *glaze* it, then reheat the pot in the same way as before to make the pot usable.
Actually in rural Villages in underdeveloped/developing countries, earthenware is still one of, if not the most, used cooling utensils.
I suspect the pit in the clay deposit was the the first "bowl". Dig a hole, put a fire in it, boom, pottery hole. Fun video!
The Dead Kennedys reference really got me
(5:03)
I’ve been watching this channel for a LONGGG time now. I just want to appreciate the work that goes Into these videos. As a science person, who loves to cook, this channel is perfect! Thank you
8:13 why i knead my pot not my dough
I love when you mix in fun info under the cooking theme like agriculture and this time, experimental archaeology. So interesting and unique.
I absolutely loved this topic! I always wonder how people accidentally invented products with some of the most complicated procedures thousands of years ago (bread, beer, pottery etc). I'd love to know more about ancient cooking!
7:48 That's so cute, the kid nailed the sound effect.
That Dead Kennedys reference was greatly appreciated.
Yes, that was amazing
Good soup, but do we have room...FOR JELLO?!
@Bogdanmeoff who compared Jello Biafra to sponge bob?
IKR
that made me so happy
holy crap, that dead kennedys reference, thank you for that Adam :D
This actually made my day!
I have to chuckle at this video, because it really demonstrates the ethnocentric approach toward anthropology. If you examine what many other agricultural cultures do now, you'll find that many of them take grains soaked in water, wrap them in leaves, and then cook them. With the lack of cooking utensils, they were likely just placed on hot stones next to the fire. My parents grew up in the jungles of Laos (as in literally in the jungles), and cooked rice wrapped in banana leaves were common.
It was also a good way to have "food on the go", as the leaves would preserve the shape, so you could eat it (like a granola bar) while out farming, hunting, etc. Soaked grains wrapped in leaves and cooked on stones is the more probable / plausible hypothesis here, given it's prevalence in many cultures today.
You know, this made me think: could this be why the mountain peoples in Laos, Vietnam etc. seem to like glutinous rice more than the non-sticky type? Because if you wrap it in a banana leaf, boil it, and open it somewhere, it'll be one sticky clump, instead of scattered grains that fall all over the place. Just a little more convenient when you're having a farm day lunch.
Loving this food history series! Great work Adam! :)
I feel like this series is prepping us for the apocalypse and eventual rebuilding of society.
Found a local posting for free fill dirt. Went and picked up a load. Turned out to be almost pure clay😍. So I'm going back for the rest to make cobb, put away for water purification, and make some pots or something out of.
I love this channel... it's like all the questions in my head are being answered out loud without me even having to ask
I swear Adam should get his own show. This was super interesting.