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5000
years of culinary history
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| Les
Trois Frères in Ariège
(c. 15,000-12,000 BC)
Bison
bison length 77 in.
(195 cm)
Altamira, Spain
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African food |
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artists before 1650 bookshop
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| The
first significant step toward the development of gastronomy was the
use of fire by primitive man to cook his food, which gave rise to
the first meals as families gathered around the fire to share the
foods they had cooked. Prehistoric cave paintings such as those in Les
Trois Frères in Ariège, in southern France, depict these early
gastronomic events.
In the ancient
civilizations of Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, and Egypt, the
selection, preparation, service, and enjoyment of food were
practiced on an elaborate scale. In the Book of Daniel the Bible
relates the story of how Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans,
“made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine
before the thousand.” He then commanded gold and silver vessels to
be brought, and he and his wives, princes, and concubines drank wine
and praised gods of gold, silver, brass, iron, wood, and stone. |
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Food on the Floor:
Edible Imagery in Roman Dining Room Floor Mosaics |
Ubirr
(40,000? B.C.)
Located
on the underside of a rock overhang, this ancient group of Yam
figures is in a remarkable state of preservation. The significance
of these unusual images, which combine features of human beings with
those of hairy, wild yams that were (and are) an important source of
food, is unknown. |
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| Yuan
Dynasty (1279-1368 A.D.)
Fisherman,
Yuan dynasty (1279–1368), ca. 1350
Wu Zhen (Chinese, 1280–1354)
China
Handscroll; ink on paper; 9 3/4 x 17 in. (24.8 x 43.2 cm)
Inscribed by the artist
Bequest of John M. Crawford Jr., 1988 (courtesy of the Metropolitan
Museum)
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Wu Zhen lived the life of a recluse. He was not very famous or
successful during his lifetime, but in the Ming period he came to be
designated one of the Four Great Masters of the late Yuan dynasty
and his style was favoured by many Ming painters, most notably Shen
Zhou (1427–1509). Wu was fond of doing "ink plays," and
his drawing shows a cartoon-like simplicity and directness.
Accompanying the hermit-fisherman, a symbol of the late Yuan
unemployed scholar, is Wu Zhen's poetic colophon:
Red
leaves west of the village reflect evening rays,
Yellow
reeds on a sandy bank cast early moon shadows.
Lightly
stirring his oar,
Thinking
of returning home,
He
puts aside his fishing pole and will catch no more. |
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| African
Rock Art: The Central Zone
Kasama Hills
Northern Province
Zambia
Courtesy of the Rock Art Research Institute, University of the
Witwatersrand, South Africa
One of the rare
representational images of the central zone. This painting of an
eland, the largest of all antelopes, is far more stylized than the
depictions of eland in the southern zone. |
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