An Edible History of Humanity

An Edible History of Humanity

The book An Edible History of Humanity brings a whole new life to realizing how food was such an important part of how areas survived and grew. It gives you detail on the impact of food and how it helped so many different areas of the world. As a whole most people never truly realize how important food was. It helped many places develop a lot further than possible at that time. It gives you interesting insight on things as simple as where certain items came from. One item I found interesting was the idea of where cinnamon came from. There ideas were crazy as large birds bringing them to their nests in Arabia, or that cinnamon was guarded by deadly snakes. This was a good choice of book for a world history class to read.

Spices truly have helped to remake the world. As Stated in An Edible History of Humanity "One of the things that make spices seem so exotic is their association with mysterious, far-off lands" (Standage, 75). This is one of the main reasons that spices became such a hit. If you had spices, then others wanted them and they would pay a large amount to get them. Having something that seemed so exotic made you appear wealthier and more powerful at this time. People at this time were willing to travel and explore new areas to find these spices. This of course helped to broaden people's ability to learn about, and map out the geography of different areas that were less known by the people of different countries, especially Europe. They were determined to figure out the origin of spices and ultimately find access to the Indies. This would in return create competing trading empires.

Spices were traveling from "India being carried as far west as Britain and frankincense from Arabia traveling as far east as China" (Standage, 71). Spices were not only being used as gifts or currency, in some cases but also to make food taste better. As trading with spices became bigger so did the world. Large trading deals were being done, and in return power was being made. Spices soon were being transferred from one place to another, making cross cultural fertilization. Spices were now a huge part of society. It was helping determine wealth and power, while also creating a large trading business to and from different empires. "Admittedly, the legacy of the spice trade is mixed. The great spice-seeking voyages revealed the true geography of the planet and began a new epoch in human history" (Standage, 104).

Soon a change of food trade took place. The Europeans did not want anything to do with the Arab spice domination. This in return started the new world and created the opening of sea trade routes between Asia, Europe and America. The Americas brought forth a lot of new foods that others were curious about. Potatoes and maize being two of the largest. Along with those foods came others such as corn, tomatoes and pineapples. As the Columbian Exchange starting taking place more transferring of foods from the old and new world increased. Although trading had always been around, now it was at a much higher pace and intensity. Maize was one of the major crops being traded.