Food and cooking in ancient and/or medieval Africa

Diet and Nutrition in Ancient and Medieval Africa

Student X

Professor X

History

20 February 2007

In a November 2006 National Geographic News one can find groundbreaking information on the dietary habit of ancient human ancestors . Lasers were used to vaporize tiny particles of tooth enamel from a 1 .8 million-year-old

. robustus fossil . This is because , .different types of edible plants leave unique chemical signatures in living tissue , including teeth (Markey , par . 3

In the same article , it was reported that the fossil remains taken from

the Swartkans cave site in South Africa revealed that

. robustus , had a surprisingly varied and flexible menu that may inlcude fruits , seeds roots , tubers , and even insects (Markey , par . 4-5

The above-cited study is still relevant today as part of an ongoing research on how humans evolve and at the same time to discover patterns in human consumption of food . Scientists are always on a lookout for ways to help solve problem of hunger in general and help Africa in particular . Understanding how African ancestors behave will reveal insight into the present and hopefully solve problems of famine and how to survive the harsh African drought seasons

This will attempt to achieve a basic understanding of African diet and nutrition in ancient and medieval times . It will also include a simple survey of factors that influenced the behavior of the inhabitants of the Dark Continent to behave that way

Ancient Africa

There is no debating the fact that , Before domestication of plants and animals al humans lived as hunter-gatherers (Akhtar ,

. 51 . This is also true in Africa where archaeological findings have confirmed the shift from hunting gathering to agriculture in key areas , namely , a Egyptian Nile Valley b ) Highland Ethiopia and c ) West Africa (Akhtar br

. 54 . And that as early as 19 ,000 B .C . archaeologists have ascertained human use of wild cereals , wild barley , and teff in the said regions (Akhtar ,

. 54

Van der Veen asserts that , The earliest unequivocal evidence for crop cultivation in northern Africa dates to 3500 BP [ .] and to 2600-2500 BP in the north-central Sahara , much later than domestication of animals (p . 5 . Van der Veen then adds that in the regions near Libya emmer wheat , barley , date , grape and figs were cultivated while in the regions near Mauritania by contrast only pearl millet was the crop being used by the inhabitants (p . 5

In the Cambridge World History of Food one can find that various African communities - especially those in the savanna-rain forest region of West Africa - experimenting with yam cultivation as early as 5 ,000 years ago (Kiple and Ornelas

. 1123 . Kersting 's groundnuts (Kerstingiella geocarpa , cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata ) and even the use of oil from palm trees (Elaeis guineensis ) were part of the cooking preparation of the people of central Ghana as early as 3 ,800 years ago (Kiple and Ornelas ,

. 1332

In the same book information can be had that ancient Africa have the...