Chapter 5 The first session of Paleolithic barbecue fragrance

The original food culture was conceived from the fire.In the age of ignorance, mountain fires ignited by lightning or accumulated heat from rotting grass often engulfed the entire forest.Where the flames rolled, the fertile grassland instantly turned into scorched earth.Fire can kill all life, billow thick smoke, bring terror to the world, make people tremble, it used to be a powerful alien force of human beings.However, after the fire, the tangy aroma of roasted beasts and nuts emanating from the ashes was particularly alluring. Those survivors who were still in shock picked them up and put them in their mouths, and the taste buds on their tongues immediately responded with a The appetite that one can't wait for has become a signal for the end of the age of human beings to drink blood.After many thrilling attempts and failures, the primitive people finally knew how to use natural fire, control the fire, and embarked on the road of cooked food.Cooked food speeds up the body's absorption of nutrients, reduces the damage of parasites, unknowingly brings about benign changes in physique, and accelerates the process from ape to man.

In my country, from the Yuanmou Man site 1.5 million years ago to the Peking Man site 600,000 to 700,000 years ago, there are traces of natural fire control.In the strata of the Yuanmou Man site, the thickness of charcoal chips is about three meters.There are more charcoal and ashes at the Peking Man site, some in piles, some in layers, and there is a layer of ashes as thick as six meters.In the stratum of these two sites, besides charcoal and ashes, there are countless kinds of animal bones and stone tools. There are also carbonized hackberry seeds in the Peking man site. According to the spore analysis of the sediments by experts, there were also walnuts at that time. , hazelnuts, pine nuts and other nuts are present.These two sites correspond to the Archaeological Pre-Paleolithic.These sites tell us that the original cooking was "barbecue" and "expansion" (putting plant seeds over charcoal fire to popcorn to eat).At that time, there was neither a rack that could put the meat on the fire nor a fire-resistant fork, so the torn animal meat could only be thrown into the fire for roasting, and it was often burnt and hard to swallow.Later, it was found out that the animal meat should be smeared with mud first, and then thrown into the fire.After roasting, when you peel it off, the mud shell and even the hair will stick off, and the skin will not be burnt. This is an improvement of the original barbecue. Ancient books call this barbecue method "cannon".In later generations, the invention of metal racks and forks made it possible to control the heat and carry out hanging and fork roasting.However, the skill of "cannon" is still used. For example, the method of depilating bear paws is commonly used for grilling with mud; the "beggar chicken" of later generations is also a continuation of the ancient "cannon" method.

The function of fire is not only to cook food, but also to improve the production level of primitive people.Holding torches, they can hunt ferocious beasts with fire attacks.Primitive people attacked the caves where cave bears and hyenas were hiding, and without much effort, they could eat fat bear meat and delicious hyena meat.They often go hunting by burning forests, and those saber-toothed tigers with bloody mouths open, rampant bison, ferocious wild boars... all become delicious meals for primitive people in the fire formation.With the means of attacking with fire, life is much better than in the past when only relying on sharp sticks and chopping tools, only a few mice could be dug up or a hare or deer could be brought in through hard work.According to statistics, there are more than 40 kinds of symbiotic animal fossils at the Yuanmou site, and more than 90 kinds at the Peking Man site.With the ability to attack with fire, the hunting level of primitive people has developed by leaps and bounds, and they can taste all the wild game in the forest at that time.With the fire, the food sources for collecting tubers and aquatic organisms were expanded, which accelerated the transformation of the ape-man physique to the Homo sapiens physique.

With fire, the ability to manufacture production tools has also improved, and further development of food sources is more secure.In the past, we could only pick up some weathered stones or go to the river beach to pick up gravel to make stone tools. After we know how to use fire, we can use the method of boiling water and peeling off a large number of stone flakes from the rock formation to make stone tools continuously.Dayao Village at the southern foot of Daqing Mountain in Inner Mongolia, Fulin Town in Hanyuan County, Sichuan Province, and Xiqiao Mountain in Nanhai County, Guangdong Province all preserve large areas of sites where stone was mined and stone tools were mined by fire and splashed in the Stone Age.Wooden sticks are one of the important production tools of primitive people. Burning sharp wooden sticks, bending wooden sticks, or making wooden sticks anti-corrosion and durable all rely on fire.In order to achieve water fishing, when starting to manufacture canoes, a deep groove must be burned on a whole log with fire, and then shaped with stone tools.

From about 50,000 to 10,000 years ago, that is, the late Paleolithic Age, there were two major breakthroughs in the development of productivity: one was the widespread use of composite production tools, that is, the use of meteor cables, stone spears, and bows and arrows. emerge; the other is to know how to make fire manually.In ancient my country, the myth about Hou Yi [Yi Yi] shooting the sun and the legend of Sui [Sui Sui] Ren's family making fire by drilling wood are extolling the power of bows and arrows and the achievement of artificial fire.With the compound production tools, not only the ability to hunt terrestrial animals has been improved, but also the scope of hunting aerial and aquatic animals has been expanded.Knowing how to make fire manually, you can also leave the virgin forest or cave and follow the river to find a way to survive, which expands the living field of primitive people.Among the many sites in this period in our country, the excavations from the lower layer of the Dushizai Cave Site in Yangchun County (now Yangchun City) in Guangdong (about 16,000 years ago) are the most abundant.Cavemen can often hunt deer, wild boar, bison, antelope, badger, fox, hedgehog, hare, rat and ostrich; they can catch herring nearly one meter long in the water; Pick up snail and ostrich eggs to eat.Today, the French love to eat snails and regard them as a dish. In fact, snails were once a home-cooked dish of our ancestors.Monoliths can often hunt rhinos, giant tapirs, black bears, clouded leopards, buffaloes, sambars, otters, porcupines, rats, small civets, golden cats, civet cats, civets, macaques, etc.; Carp and molluscs such as mussels, clams, and snails.Among the rodents in Dushizai, in addition to the plate-toothed rat and the flying (wuwu) rat, there is also the house mouse. It can be seen that mice and humans have lived together, with a history of at least 16,000 years.Rats, too, were once a domestic game of our ancestors.The tails of the snails of Dushizai are smashed off, so that they can be cooked and sucked.Now Cantonese people eat snails in the same way. It can be seen that the tradition of eating snails in Lingnan has lasted for at least 16,000 years.