The dinner party is even a title frivolous, and the subtitle - A history of nutrition in eleven Banquet - seems almost to underline this lightly. As often happens, the original title is more modest and focused: Feast. Why humans share food . The subject is difficult and complex. No less, however, of how fascinating and rewarding once you are immersed in the pages of the book.
Martin Jones is a British archaeologist, is particularly concerned with the findings related to the consumption and production of food and nutrition effects on humans and their social organization.
For most of us Western food production is an activity that now appears remote, and its consummation is a daily ritual that we take for granted. Therefore tend to underestimate the very real fact that food is the base from which can not ignore our existence, individual and species. Even we (more) aware of the fact that the procurement of food was the worry heavier along almost the whole twist in the history of our race and those from which we evolved.
Jones's book does more than merely remind us that these aspects in our western, casual and grease gobbling omit often.
Jones performs a thorough and careful analysis of all data in our possession: archaeological, climatological, biological. Principle by the meticulous reconstruction of the dynamics of pre-human access and consumption of food at a community of chimpanzees, and then by the man from the archaeological reconstruction of a site of 500,000 years ago where a group of Homo heidelbergensis slaughtered and partially consumed a wild horse, will land on our civilization of the fast-food . Eleven stages, archaeological or otherwise, of a path through which the author leads us, unraveling a story that he pauses and points of wires that appear to the contrary and are uninterrupted. E 'consideration trivial, but again is something that we tend to forget too easily: the food - its availability, procurement, its consummation - the man has changed during the course of his whole existence as a species. Changed on the biological, social, psychological. In turn, the man has for food constantly, constantly changing the natural environment where it obtains its food sources and methods used to obtain it. Even today, the most critical technology - and the decisive break - introduced by man and the farm, which has completely revolutionized the conduct of our species: the economic, social, psychological, religious, physiological. And 'that come with farming capital accumulation and social hierarchy, then the interconnected global society in which we live. So also the war as a paradigm of the relationship between nations in order to control the sources of supply. No technology, finally, has changed more and more deeply the physical face of the planet. That was an innovation is therefore far from happy talk.
If man has shaped his food through agriculture, the food, in turn, has shaped the man. Its availability, durability, reproducibility determined the reproductive success of our species. On the food, which is essentially the grain, man has re-built his company and its beliefs. In turn, these memes have influenced the most powerful man in our psyche to mimic the supposed natural farming and psychosocial development that it caused. Up to affect the natural choice for example is certainly food for thought why our Western civilization has come to take the wheat as a staple food (indeed, some of its varieties) and not a grain in almost every way superior quality and barley . In Asia can bring the same thought exchanging wheat with rice. Agriculture and its ideals and social superstructures not only have had any negative impact on human physiology, but have introduced a certain cultural conservatism in this case, slowing the ability to respond to external events.
Although the technical rigor with which Jones procedure makes sometimes not easy to understand and use the subject matter, however, the same rigor, and the tenacity of a scientist, dissects the topic so completely and deep to allow the reader willing to commit to reaching a full knowledge of a subject so complex and infinite ramifications in many different disciplines. From a purely literary point of view just mentioned the irony of which Jones knows how to use this process easier.
This rigor and tenacity that are no less important for explaining the working methods applied, and in general the progress of scientific investigation, the formation of hypotheses, the search for confirmation, the job analysis and exegesis of the sources.
The dinner party examination is not only a clear, comprehensive and full of reflections side appearance most central of human history to the state of current knowledge, is no less powerful narration of this story. Jones draws from all the information that a subject is alive. The archaeological sites at which transports the reader literally comes to life, showing us the humanity that lived there and who fought tirelessly to survive, then grow and multiply.
It is common to find books that can do everything. To enable us to know ourselves, to understand how and why we got where we are now. And makes it charming. Books that give meaning to the activity of reading.
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