As populations grew, the availability of foods that required little or no cooking lessened. The evolution of cooking methods appears to coincide with more land use, which Thoms outlined in a model. Using fire for warmth led to direct cooking on, in, and above coals. Thoms and several assistants also used ethnographic data to replicate early Native American cooking methods. While large meat steaks were probably just cooked directly on white ash fires, the camas bulbs were cooked "luau-style," a method that Native Americans and Polynesians developed independently, Thoms believes. Early Native Americans dug a pit and lined it with firewood and rocks, which they burned. Moist, green plants then went over the hot rocks. Vegetable fiber sacks full of fresh bulbs went over the plants and were covered with additional greenery. Sometimes a second fire was then built over the mound. After a day or two, dinner was served. Although the bulbs are about as nutritious as sweet potatoes, they fell out of favor not only because of long cooking times, but also because they take longer to grow and provide fewer calories per pound than wheat, corn, rice and other starches. James O'Connell, a distinguished professor of anthropology at The University of Utah, told Discovery News that the new papers present a "well-supported inference about past human behavior from a widely recognized archaeological pattern." "I think (Thoms') argument that the origin of heated-stone cooking is an example of subsistence intensification is interesting," said anthropologist Michael Glassow of the University of California at Santa Barbara. "It makes a lot of sense to me." Related Links: |
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