An Edible History of Humanity - Hardcover

"Cogent, informative and insightful.""-Kirkus Reviews" "A fascinating history of the role of food in causing, enabling and influencing successive transformations of human society...An extraordinary and well-told story, a much neglected dimension to history."-Sir Crispin Tickell, "Financial Times" "The emphasis on food as a cultural catalyst differentiates Standage from Michael Pollan, whose plants' eye view of the world keeps the consumables central. With Standage it is not what changes in food that matters, but rather what food changes. And it's not just one food lifting and guiding history, but what Adam Smith might have called the 'invisible fork' of food economics.""-New Scientist" "Earliest civilizations appeared on earth when farmers banded together and exploited their excess crops as a means of trade and currency. This allowed some people to abandon agriculture [leading to] organized commu

Throughout history, food has done more than simply provide sustenance. It has acted as a tool of social transformation, political organization, geopolitical competition, industrial development, military conflict and economic expansion. An Edible History of Humanity is an account of these other, indirect uses of food which have helped to shape and transform societies around the world, from prehistory to the present. Food helped to found, structure and connect together civilizations across the world. Food helped to build empires and bring about a surge in economic development through industrialization. Food has been employed as a military and ideological weapon. And today, in the culmination of a process which has been going on for thousands of years, the foods we choose in the supermarket connect us to global debates about trade, development and the adoption of new technologies. Served up in order, and drawing from fields including genetics, archaeology, anthropology, ethno-botany and economics, the story of these gastronomic revolutions is a fully satisfying account of the whole of human history.