Very cool read. I find it so fascinating to imagine day to day life in ancient times and how it isn’t all that different from today.

I had no idea, for example, that ancient Romans had restaurants. I’m not sure I would personally want to time travel just to try honey roasted rat, though.

In ancient Greece, publicly funded restaurants served certain citizens granted the privilege such as “public officials, generals, visiting government officials, and victorious athletes.”

Speaking of ancient food, I ran across an article about examining burned up food remnants from 5000 year old cookware to see what paleolithic folks ate.

“The ‘food crusts’ contained tissue remnants of emmer and barley grains, as well as seeds from the white goosefoot, a wild plant that grows as a weed and ruderal plant and produces many starchy seeds,” explains Professor Wiebke Kirleis, head of the study in the CRC 1266.

The barley was harvested when milky ripe and prepared in a similar way to the green spelt traditionally produced in Baden-Württemberg. The emmer was processed in a sprouted state, which gave the porridge a sweet flavor.

Food in the Neolithic Age was therefore by no means bland, but rather varied. People had a highly differentiated sense of taste and attached great importance to good flavor.

Not too surprising people haven’t changed much in 5 millennia.