How early was the earliest hot pot? Much earlier than Yao, Shun and Yu!

Frost has passed, is the beginning of winter far away? I see that many friends in the north have already started preparing for winter. Some friends also said that hot pot is more suitable for winter. It is so warm to eat hot pot with a whole family. But do you know when the earliest hot pot was invented?

Let’s share with you our ancient delicacies.

01 Hot pot (soup pot) 20,000 years ago

The history of our foodies can be traced back to at least 20,000 years ago . How magnificent! You have to know that in this era when people all over the world were still hunter-gatherers, agriculture had not yet appeared, and they relied purely on luck and wandered around looking for food, a group of Chinese people were holding pottery pots and "eating hot pot and singing songs"... The picture is so beautiful that I can't imagine it...

In 2012, a scientific article was titled “ Early Pottery at 20,000 Years Ago in Xianrendong Cave, China ”, which means that pottery dating back 20,000 years was discovered in Xianrendong Cave, Jiangxi, China .

I guess many people will be discouraged when they see this. There are a lot of pottery in China, so what's so special about this? Yes, China is a country of ceramics, and everyone is used to it. But you have to know that before this, most of the pottery in the world was about 10,000 years old.

Well, someone will definitely say that this is just pushing history back. Anyway, everyone knows that it has a long history, so what does it have to do with this article? Then I want to tell you that these pottery vessels are used for cooking .

Grill marks

Restoration diagram

This is a really subversive understanding of the world, because we have always believed that humans only used pottery to cook after the emergence of agriculture , and before that, humans could only grill meat. After all, without large-scale crops and domestication, humans could not obtain stable food, and basically ate one meal and starved the next, eating whatever they could find. Using pottery to cook is a cooking technique and a product of agriculture, but this archaeological excavation directly tells you that even without agriculture, even if there was very little food, it would not affect the Chinese people's cooking skills...

You have to know that 20,000 years ago, humans in the world were still in the gathering and hunting era. Even wheat, which is now considered the earliest domesticated crop, did not appear until 8,000 to 10,000 years later.

In an era of hunting and gathering, where people depended purely on luck for their livelihood, and when most people in the world ate raw meat and drank blood, can you imagine a group of Chinese people sitting together and cooking with pottery?

Other ancient humans did this

Or do this

This group of people in Xianren Cave are doing this, eating clay pot rice? Hahahaha

You can imagine that most humans were still hunting like some modern African tribes, while this group of Chinese, in addition to hunting, also carried pottery jars with them.

Two primitive people met: Come learn to cook from me~~~

02. Noodles from 4,000 years ago

In 2005, Nature published an article written by a Chinese, “ Millet noodles in Late Neolithic China ”. What was it about? Noodles from the late Neolithic period were discovered in China!

Noodles are a popular food all over the world, with a history of at least 2,000 years. However, there is still controversy about the origin of noodles, with Chinese, Italian or Arab origins all having their own theories. Here, the author reports noodles from the late Paleolithic period discovered at the Lajia site!!!

You may not be familiar with the Lajia site , but you must be familiar with the very popular Science article that discovered the great flood in the Xia Dynasty. At that time, I also secretly wrote an article to interpret it.

One of the most critical pieces of evidence in this article is the Lajia site. Through the remains of the Lajia site, the flood was dated to 3920 years ago! This is the noodles found in the article, and the C14 identification result is 4000 years old.

The noodles are in the bowl.

Rejoice, Flying Ramen people! 4,000 years ago, Jesus was not yet born! Neither was Moses! Noah and the Great Flood had just happened, and the great Chinese had already invented noodles for you!

03Xizhou Eggs

It was unearthed from a Western Zhou tomb dating back 2,800 years (Fushan, Jurong, Jiangsu).

And not just one, a jar

Nanjing Museum exhibits 2,800-year-old "Western Zhou Eggs" (Photo)_NetEase News Center

04 Dumplings from 2,600 years ago and bone soup from 2,400 years ago

Dumplings from 2,600 years ago

Bone soup from 2,400 years ago. This excavation came from a Qin tomb from the Warring States Period excavated at Xianyang Airport in Shaanxi Province. Bone soup was found in a bronze tripod. This plain bronze tripod is 20 cm high. When archaeologists carefully opened the top cover of the tripod, they found that half of the volume of liquid was retained in the tripod, and the turbid liquid also contained the bones of poultry similar to chickens.

Archaeological discoveries of millennium bone soup and ancient wine

04 Beef Jerky from 2000

2,000-year-old beef jerky? The reason why we came to the conclusion that it was beef jerky is that the beef in the bronze jar did not shrink after 2,000 years, which means that it had been dried before being placed in the tomb.

05 Pancakes from 5,000 years ago

5,000-year-old pancake (no physical object, but with a mold) (Qingtai Site, Henan Province).

Pancake Pan

See, isn't the reputation of a country of foodies well-deserved? By the way, do you know what the people in Xianren Cave eat? This word already exists in oracle bone script.

Do you know him? Hahaha, a deer.

90% of the bones at the Xianren Cave site are deer bones.

The Chinese custom of eating deer can be traced back to 20,000 years ago. And it was applied to the struggle for the world in the Central Plains.

Wu X, Zhang C, Goldberg P, et al. Early pottery at 20,000 years ago in Xianrendong Cave, China[J]. Science, 2012, 336(6089): 1696-1700.