Plenty of misogynistic religions and political movements, both modern and historical, have been able to attract many female followers.
Absolutely.
Thanks!
The Good Berry: A Wild Rice Domestication TL
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Plenty of misogynistic religions and political movements, both modern and historical, have been able to attract many female followers.
Absolutely.
Thanks!
Except there were a lot of 'civilized' cultures that did have some form of gender equality. Ancient Egypt, Sparta, Ancient Persia, Illyria/Thrace, Minoan Civilization, Saxon England the list goes on. Most people tend to view the Ancient World through a Greco-Roman lens and mind you, most of that world was misogynistic, but there are plenty of other example otherwise.
Every single civilization you listed was a patriarchal society. Women's rights varied but none had anything approaching gender equality. The occasional powerful woman (especially noble women, who had very different rules from the lower classes) or female ruler does not change that fact.
Nor, I should note, does strict gender rules and society-wide misogyny stop women from becoming powerful or exercising their power. Or from becoming powerful rulers as we shall see later ITTL. It makes it harder, sure, but it is far from impossible.
Chapter 38: A Dish with One Spoon
Chapter 38: A Dish with One Spoon
In Minisia [North America], lower class people ate once or twice a day. If once, then the meal was served just before bed in order to lessen hunger pains while attempting to fall asleep. If twice, then they would eat once in the morning and once in the evening. Upper class people might eat three, four or even five meals in a single day.
Families, consisting of parents and children, usually ate together. Entire longhouses might gather for communal meals every few days. In a village, whole clans would eat together every few weeks. The entire village or city would feast together during holidays or festivals, with the meals paid for by the rich.
At a typical family meal, men, women, and children sat at the same table at the same time to eat. Leaders and guests were served first, then the men, then the children, and finally the women. This partly reflected social status but was also practical, as women were the ones who served the meal. This was also reversed during the festival of abundance which we discussed previously.
During more formal meals, children would be seated separately, served first, and then allowed to play while the adults ate. Under Mozism, women were excluded more and more from formal meals and official conversations. They were often expected to eat with the children at more formal events.
Dishware was made of wood or ceramic and rarely cleaned. They would be used over and over until broken. At other times, bread or squash was used in place of plates. Most (non-soup) food was eaten with the hands. Wooden spoons were ubiquitous. Copper knives were only used by the richest.
At times, ambassadors from different kingdoms or city-states would come together to literally eat out of the same bowl with the same spoon to symbolize their commitment to the peace process. We all eat from a dish with one spoon was a common saying that promoted peace and cooperation.
Soups and stews, slow cooked over a low fire, were the most common meals for the Menominee. Typically, a lower class household would keep a soup simmering, always ready to be eaten. More and/or new ingredients were added each day.
Cooking fires were rarely extinguished. The smoldering embers from the previous days fire would be used to relight the fire each morning. This was often ritualized and mythologized. The always burning fire was a symbol of the loyalty, hard work, and dedication of the housewife.
In lowland areas, as much as 70% of the food found in abandoned grain silos was manoomin. In highland areas, the same would be true of maize and bede [apios americana]. This does not necessarily mean that 70% of food consumed was manoomin, maize or bede, though. Not all food is stored in silos. But for the lower classes, most of their food would be either manoomin, maize, or bede [Apios Americana] depending on the area they lived. Especially during the long winter months.
Manoomin was so instrumental to Shawnee cooking it was called “the food without which there was no meal”. It was so ubiquitous that soup was generally only named for what other ingredients were put in it. So, for example, okosimaan naboob (“squash soup”) would be expected to contain both squash and manoomin.
Manoomin could also be served as part of a salad or stir-fry, you just had to drain the water used to boil it. This was more common among the Ongweh’onweh [Iroquois]. Succotash, a salad mix of maize, beans, and squash, was common in upland areas. It was sometimes made with manoomin added or replacing maize, especially in lowland areas.
Maize or beans might be added to make multi-grain soups. Sunroot [Jerusalem artichoke] was slow boiled to sweeten soups. Ramps, an onion relative, were used to add savoriness. Tomatoes were used to add umami flavoring, especially in the south. Bede [Apios Americana] flour was often used to thicken the broth. Meat might even be added.
The further south you went, the more common aji [chili peppers] were to be used as spices. In many places, aji was considered a poor man’s spice to mask the taste of poor quality food. Larger, sweeter aji [bell peppers] were more popular among the elite. Aji might also be stuffed with manoomin or other ingredients to make a meal on their own.
Dumplings and noodles made from maize were more common in the south. So was bread and roasted maize on the cob. Bean goulashes [chili] were also common.
The dish called okosimaan jiiman (“squash boat”) was made by cutting a squash in half, emptying it of its seeds, and fill it instead with manoomin and other ingredients. It was popular everywhere, north and south. Spherical squashes [pumpkins] were sometimes filled with soup and used as a kind of edible bowl, though the squash had to be baked separately.
Grits and porridge (made from kiinwaa [domesticated goosefoot] or other grains) were common, especially among the poor. Mashed squash or mashed bede were common staples as well. Both were also often served to the elderly who had no teeth to chew their food.
Some dishes were popular in specific regions. Agokiwasigan, [Korean Gochujang] a type of aji [pepper] paste over black rice and vegetables was common in the Tanasi valley. Bakwezhiganaaboo, [Poutine] a type of thinly-cut fried bede topped with gravy was common in the Mictaang. Manidoana [Thousand Islands, QB/ Kingston, Ontario] was famous for its sauces, particularly a type of fish sauce that was an elite item popular across the Mishigami. [3] Popcorn was common everywhere but particularly popular in the Great Plains, where the hard outer shell of the grain meant increased resilience from drought. And so on, for many regions.
Each married woman was expected to maintain her own fire and cooking pots for soup but there were other ways to cook. Earthen ovens were communal, with a single oven to a neighborhood or entire village. Richer longhouses might have their own earthen ovens. They were often use to bake maize-bread.
An abwewin, a type of griddle or frying pan made from clay, was used to cook tortillas and pancakes. Pancakes were made with maizebread and filled with various vegetables, including ramps and aji. Leavened bread was either very rare or non-existent at this time.
Sunflower and squash seed oils were most commonly used to fry food. Sunflower seeds and squash seeds were often roasted. Squash flowers could also be deep fried. These were all common snack foods.
Sunflower oil could also used as a kind of salad dressing, being poured over kiinwaa greens or bread. The oil need not necessarily be eaten. It was often rubbed into the skin and hair. It was also used to treat snakebites, with dubious effectiveness.
Bread could also be made by deep frying dough in oil to make a frybread called supone. Supone might also be topped with maple sugar or berries. It was more popular in the south and in upland areas which relied on maize.
Meat was eaten irregularly. Eggs were the most commonly eaten meat, if you consider them meat. The next most common form of meat was fish and crayfish. Catfish, in particular, was prized and was even farmed in some parts of the Ziibiing. Caviar, ironically enough, was only eaten by the poor. It was considered the junk part of sturgeon that would otherwise be thrown away.
Many male ducks, geese, and turkeys were culled before winter. Females would generally be killed when they stopped producing eggs. Turkeys and rabbits were the only animals that were widely raised solely for their meat. Wapiti elk meat was rarely eaten and only by the richest people. Dog meat was considered highly prized, though it was not as common as some modern stereotypes of Minisians would suggest. Cannibalism was rare and only for ritualistic or survival purposes.
Meat that was not farmed or fished had to be hunted. Who was allowed to hunt and where they were allowed to hunt was controversial and ever changing. Nobles and other powerful landowners often tried to restrict hunting on or near their property. But it was often difficult to enforce such measures. Areas around large cities were often devoid of sizable game. This, among many other food problems, led to nutritional deficiencies being common among the urban poor.
Large amounts of meat were consumed during holidays and festivals, by all classes but by the rich especially. These holidays and festivals were often purposefully held during times of year when meat was common, such as autumn when flocks needed to be culled before winter. Animals were usually fattened and sometimes even force fed before slaughter.
Meat and fish that wasn’t eaten during the festivals would be preserved by smoking, salting, covering in sugar, covering in aji [peppers], or pickling. Each preservation technique gave a unique flavor to the preserved meat and was used to vary the taste of dishes during the long, cold winters.
The rich might eat meat every day. But then they indulged and overindulged with food in many ways. Seemingly random foods would would skyrocket the price as it became fashionable to eat them. Fresh fish from the sea was always desired and always magnificently expensive if you were far inland. Of course, the expense only increased the desire for those eager to show off their wealthy tastes.
One of the most famous feasts in Minisian history was the Swans of Tuskaloosa. The King of Tuskaloosa, in an attempt to show off his wealth, threw a feast in which hundreds of guests were each given the wing of a swan with which to fan themselves. The bodies of the swans had been thrown away, as they were not considered good to eat by the rich. The poor of the city, however, discovered the discarded swan bodies and soon frenzied to gather them up. The resulting riot disrupted the feast, much to the displeasure of the King of Tuskaloosa.
Deserts were made with berries, sunroot and later camas to add sugar. Maple sap and its products were also added to many otherwise bland foods to sweeten them. Maple sap was boiled to make syrup, taffy, maple butter, and sugar. Maple sugar was separated into various grades based on color, from “dirt” to “bird-shit” to “snow” with lighter colors considered superior. Unscrupulous merchants were known to add eggs whites to create the desired color. Sugar was also used as a preservative. The resulting sweet meats and candied fruit were popular but expensive treats. Chocolate would have been very rare and expensive, imported from across the Chitti Gulf [Gulf of Mexico].
The most common drink was, simply enough, water. There were many reservoirs and aqueducts built to carry fresh, clean water to large numbers of people. However, many people were still forced to drink dirty or contaminated water.
Teas made with various herbs or spices were common. While the Shawnee did not understand why, they did observe that some people who were sick stopped being sick when they drank tea. Today we know those people were getting sick from untreated water. By boiling the water the bacteria in the water would die. The people would get better on their own since they were no longer being poisoned by the water they drank. At the time the ingredients of the tea were ascribed medicinal properties they did not have. Thus, raspberry (the leaves not the berries), peppermint, yaupon holly, burdock with and without nettle, spruce, beebalm, and kinnikinnick [bearberry] were all used in both teas and medicines. Kinnikinnick was also smoked like tobacco.
Milk was hardly ever drunk. The only domesticated mammal large enough to bother milking was the Wapiti Elk and, culturally it was considered stealing from their calves to milk them. Lactose intolerance and milk sickness, caused by ingesting milk poisoned by the death milk plant [white snakeweed] were also deterrents. In an emergency, Wapiti milk might be used to feed a starving infant but otherwise, milk drinking was taboo. There was also no cheese or other dairy products.
There were many different types of alcohol fermented and drunk in Minisia. The lack of knowledge about yeast often meant that taste and alcohol content varied wildly between batches. The froth of a good batch, called barm in the European tradition, would be put into the next to try to make more consistency. Even so, water, fruit, herbs, spices, or maple syrup was often added to cover up the taste of a bad batch. Batches also spoiled quickly, which encouraged binging. Not that anyone greatly needed encouragement.
Beers, usually made from manoomin or maize, were the most common type of alcoholic drink. Thick beer was used as payment and rations for workers on building projects like wajiw [pyramids/mounds] or canals. Maize was considered the better seed to make beer. Today we know that is because maize has a higher sugar content. The Ohiyoong [Ohio] and the Wabashaang [Indiana] were famous for their beer and beer drinking.
Beer drinking was considered uncouth by many of the nobility, who preferred wine made from either frost grapes or muscadine grapes. The Naawayi’ii Peninsula [Michigan] and Meskonsing [Wisconsin] were famous for their wine. The Miyamee [Detroit, MI] vs. Milliokee [Milwaukee, WI] wars described in the Winter and Summer Chronicles are sometimes reenacted as wine competitions.
Other alcoholic drinks included sunwine, an alcoholic drink made from sunroot [Jerusalem artichoke] which was used in some religious ceremonies. Maple Meade, an alcoholic drink made from maple sap was common in the north. It was more common in some places than manoomin beer. There were no hard liquors, as distillation had not been discovered.
Next week, we will discuss the Shawnee conquest of the Wasioto Basin.
1Taken from: https://theantiquebreadboardmuseum...._wooden_bread_trencher.jpg?w=825&h=510&crop=1
2Taken from: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR7a8ds2XIKfxboj5OEgRyGMfoGjKWgf1OrL-V6QDD2iQ&s
3 Yes, this is a reference to Thousand Islands Salad dressing.
4Taken from: https://cdn.foodaciously.com/static...0cf68832de93c17cb42c282f34f7832e-1920-q60.jpg
5Taken from: https://www.thespruceeats.com/thmb/...-hero-01-78e1e92c2e4948a4b98ba23c0701d274.jpg
6Taken from: https://www.perurail.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Chicha-de-jora-1.png
Comments? Questions?
Always interesting to know about historical diets, since it could describe the health, the technologies and the wealth of the eaters and their world-view.
The fact that the lower classes eat only once a day and spend their days suffering from the prangs of hunger doesn't look healthy: it might make workers less productive and make them weker relative to diseases, especially if the water is unsafe. I wonder if epidemics will occur in larger urban areas.
The fact that the lower classes eat only once a day and spend their days suffering from the prangs of hunger doesn't look healthy: it might make workers less productive and make them weker relative to diseases, especially if the water is unsafe. I wonder if epidemics will occur in larger urban areas.
The number of meals thing seems inverted to me, at least if you compare to medieval european dietary advice, where noble, clerics, and otherwise relatively less active lifestyles were recommended not to eat more than two meals [Dinner and Supper](mind, the number of courses could vary on wealth), whereas only peasants and day laborers would frequently have an early morning breakfast in addition to those
What was recommended and what people actually did are two different things. In fact, if you read a recommendation in a history book its probably because people at the time weren't doing that. If it was already common, there would be no need to recommend a change.
As for the number of meals, I was basing that more on how people in some areas of sub-Saharan Africa eat rather than on medieval peasants. I imagine how often you ate would vary tremendously depending on how rich you were and what was available, among many other factors. But the lowest of the low would certainly be malnourished in ATL society just as they were OTL.
We've already had an outbreak of disease partly motivated by malnutrition during the 536 AD event:
I think as metallurgy becomes more common and there's more metal tools to go around the situation would improve, but this as this civs' start-off point feels appropriate. I think as time goes on the average QoL would become better for the average person.
Yup. Fermentation would take about 2-3 days (or less) and it would spoil after a week or so. Very little carbonation as well. That's what making beer with wild yeast does.
Great chapter. Also, is wild rice going to spread into Florida, the American Southwest, the Caribbean, Mesoamerica, Central America, and South America? It seems to me that a more advanced Mississippian civilization would be involved with trade more.
Thanks!
To take these each in turn:
1) Florida, the Caribbean, Mesoamerica, Central America are all tropical climates. Wild rice is really a cold temperate plant. I think it could be bred to survive the sub-tropical areas of the American Southeast but further south is just too hot.
2) South America is either tropical (which has the same problems as #1) or too far away for direct trade for the time being.
3) The American Southwest is probably just too dry to have rice paddy agriculture.
California and the Pacific Northwest, though? Expect lots of wild rice farming.
Other plants (like the domesticated Apios Americana called bede ITTL) will spread far and wide, too.
I'm not sure what you mean by this.
If you mean, growing wild rice and maize in the same community, the ATL peoples of North America already do that. Some communities grow more of one then the other due to local conditions but growing both is already widespread ITTL.
Rice Production in Mexico:
But note that this is Asian rice, which is a tropical plant. This is not wild rice, which is much less heat tolerant.
Of course, there are always cultivars....Rice Production in Mexico:
But note that this is Asian rice, which is a tropical plant. This is not wild rice, which is much less heat tolerant.
Thanks!You’re doing absolutely wonderful!
There are limits. We can't make Asian rice grow wonderfully well in northern Saskatchewan (where Wild Rice grows just fine), after all.