Here are 10 fascinating facts about ancient cuisine that will make you rethink what people ate millennia ago. From fermented fish sauces to sacred onions, each bite tells a story of culture, belief, and ingenuity.
10 Laden Food
The most popular condiment in the Roman world was garum (also known as liquamen), a sauce created by layering fish or fish guts with salt in large vats and leaving them to bask in the sun. As the mixture warmed, the fish’s own stomach acids broke down its flesh, leaving a thick, brown liquid. When the proteins decomposed, they released amino‑acid chains, notably glutamic acid, which combined with sodium to form a sauce bursting with monosodium glutamate – essentially ancient MSG.
Garum was a staple for Romans, used as a sauce, dip, and even a salt substitute. They drizzled it on virtually everything, from meat to custard. Massive factories churned out the condiment for export across the Mediterranean. Varieties were blended with vinegar, wine, honey, herbs, and oil, ranging from expensive, high‑quality batches for the elite to cheap, everyday versions for slaves.
Eventually, taxes on salt and pirate raids crippled the large‑scale production of garum, but the sauce still survives in parts of southern Italy and can be found at Ava Gene’s, a Roman‑themed eatery in Portland, Oregon. If a legionnaire were dropped into a modern food court, they’d probably find Vietnamese and Cantonese dishes more familiar than Italian pasta, given the Romans’ lack of noodles and tomatoes.
10 Fascinating Facts About Ancient Cuisine
9 Chinese Cannabis
The non‑psychoactive form of cannabis served as a food crop for rural peoples across Eurasia in antiquity, including in Rome, Egypt, and China. Hemp seeds were pressed into oil and ground into flour, producing porridge or fried sweets. One ancient Chinese moniker for the land was “the land of hemp and mulberry.” Hemp, called ma, entered the diet during the Chou dynasty and remained a staple through the Warring States, Qin, and Han periods, persisting until the 10th century AD.
The Li Qi listed hemp among the five great grains alongside barley, rice, wheat, and soybeans. They understood the psychoactive properties of marijuana, distinguishing between ma fen (toxic cannabis) and ma ze (harmless hemp). Ma fen was said to cause visions of devils and was used by necromancers with ginseng to glimpse the future. In the second century AD, physician Hua T’o blended cannabis with wine to create an anesthetic for surgeries. Some scholars argue that the “ma” referenced in ancient texts might actually be hu ma, foreign hemp, i.e., sesame seeds, but that interpretation lacks the fun factor.
8 The Gladiator Diet
Scientists examined collagen and mineral content in bone samples from 68 mostly young men interred at the ancient Roman city of Ephesus. The analysis revealed that gladiators subsisted on a largely vegetarian diet. Using a spectrometer, researchers measured strontium levels in the skeleton of a man believed to be Euxenius, a retired gladiator‑trainer in his fifties. They expected low strontium, which would signal heavy meat consumption, but instead discovered high strontium, indicating a diet rich in barley and beans.
Gladiators adhered to a strict eating regimen, allowing a feast only on the night before a bout. Their plant‑heavy diet, coupled with intense physical exertion, may have spurred high tooth‑decay rates, yet the elevated strontium likely aided rapid bone repair. Later studies showed that non‑gladiators also ate primarily plant‑based meals, but gladiators possessed higher mineral concentrations, probably because they consumed a sports drink made from vinegar mixed with plant ash, which fortified their bodies and promoted faster healing after injuries.
7 Oily Pastries Of The Gods
Food played a central role in Hittite spiritual practice, appearing in both sacrificial rites and magical rituals. Animal sacrifice—pigs, oxen, or sheep—was a key element of “feeding and caring for the gods.” After the ritual slaughter, the heart, liver, and select cuts were offered to deities, while the remainder fed mortals. The feast was typically supplemented with baked goods, sweets, and drinks.
Vegetable oil and oil‑laden pastries were especially important in Hittite cuisine and religion. One ceremonial dish for royalty was saknas parsur, a stew of oil. After a lavish offering of sweet, oil‑filled pastries and a pitcher of cold beer, a common Hittite prayer invoked: “O gods, let your stomach be filled with vegetable oil and your brain intoxicated with beer!” The Hittite term for bread and pastries was ninda. Among their baked goods, ninda gurra denoted a thick bread used in ceremonies, while ninda gullant(i) described a ring‑shaped or hollow bread—raising the tantalizing possibility that ancient Anatolians offered doughnuts to their deities.
6 Sumerian Beer Culture
The earliest known beer, called kui, was brewed by ancient Chinese peoples around 7,000 BC. In the West, the oldest evidence of brewing dates to 3,500‑3,100 BC at the Godin Tepe site in modern Iran, though scholars believe the Sumerians were brewing even earlier, possibly as far back as 10,000 BC. Sumerian women typically brewed beer from bippar, a twice‑baked barley bread, yielding a thick, porridge‑like brew consumed through a straw.
The Sumerian pantheon was also fond of beer. A famous poem recounts how the god of wisdom, Enki, became so intoxicated that he handed the sacred meh (laws of civilization) to Inana, the patron goddess of Uruk. When Enki awoke with a monstrous hangover, Inana was already racing back to the city to teach humans about politics, crafts, hairstyles, purification rites, sexual practices, and more. The goddess Ninkasi personified beer and oversaw its production. A hymn to Ninkasi reads like a glorified ode: “Ninkasi, you who pour the filtered beer of the collector vat, you are like the onrush of the Tigris and the Euphrates… May Ninkasi live together with you!”
Records of Sumerian brewing are scarce because the process was so commonplace that no one bothered to write it down. In 2006, archaeologists in northern Syria recreated a barley‑and‑emmer beer based on archaeological clues, though certainty about its accuracy remains limited. Some skeptics even argue that Sumerian “beer” might have been non‑alcoholic, but enthusiasm for a non‑intoxicating brew seems unlikely.
5 Sacred Onions
Although Egyptian art frequently depicts fishing and hunting, forensic analysis reveals that most Nile dwellers followed a predominantly vegetarian diet. A French research team examined carbon isotopes in Egyptian mummies ranging from 3,500 BC to AD 600, discovering a striking dietary consistency: wheat and barley formed the staple, supplemented by millet and sorghum. The only notable deviation occurred among pyramid builders, who consumed roughly 1,800 kg (4,000 lb) of beef, lamb, and goat daily—a perk of state employment. Generally, meat and fish were rarer than plant foods.
Among vegetables, the onion (and its kin leeks and garlic) reigned supreme. Originating from Central Asia, onions arrived in Egypt and quickly became a staple for both rich and poor. Their non‑perishable, hydrating nature made them ideal for sustaining laborers constructing the great pyramids and other monuments.
Onions also held deep religious significance. They were linked to the milk teeth of Horus and used in sacrifices to him, while also being associated with the solar falcon god Sokaris, who was honored with the Night of the Onion festival (Netjeryt). Priests are often depicted holding onions or piling them onto altars. Their concentric layers symbolized eternal life, leading to their inclusion in mummification rituals. Some Greek and Roman writers claimed Egyptians swore oaths while clutching onions, deeming it sinful to eat them, and even suggested a cult worshipped wild onions as deities. Though archaeological evidence contradicts these claims, the notion inspired Roman satirist Juvenal, who wrote: “How Egypt, mad with superstition grown, Makes gods of monsters but too well is known. ’Tis moral sin an Onion to devour, Each clove of garlic hath a sacred power…”
4 Dread Beans
Pythagoras, famed philosopher, championed vegetarianism based on the belief in the transmigration of souls—if human souls could inhabit animals, then killing animals for meat equated to murder. He made an exception for animals slaughtered in religious sacrifice, recognizing the social importance of communal feasting. Even then, he prohibited consumption of certain animal parts: loins, testicles, other reproductive organs, bone marrow, feet, and heads.
Pythagoras is also notorious for banning fava beans. Aristotle offered several explanations: the beans resembled sexual organs, and Porphyry added that sun‑exposed beans would emit a scent reminiscent of semen. Another theory suggested the beans mirrored the gates of Hades, being the sole plant without joints—an analogy obvious to ancient Greeks. Some scholars think the prohibition was a veiled political maneuver, discouraging followers from voting, as black and white fava beans were used as ballots. Pliny claimed the beans housed the souls of the dead.
Aristotle also suggested the beans were “destructive,” possibly a reference to flatulence, but a more scientific view emerged in 1980 when researchers Brumbaugh and Schwartz linked the ban to favism—a hereditary deficiency of glucose‑6‑phosphate dehydrogenase causing hemolytic anemia when fava beans are consumed. This condition was common in the Mediterranean. Yet, the ancient verse from Heraclides Ponticus—“Eating beans is the same as eating the heads of one’s parents”—remains a vivid, albeit cryptic, admonition.
3 Ancient Indian Beef
The modern Hindu taboo against beef was not shared by their Vedic forebears. Cattle featured prominently in Vedic sacrifices to deities, as well as in funerary rites. The Rig‑Veda explicitly declares, “Indra will eat thy bulls.” The Satapatha Brahmana records philosopher Yajnavalkya saying, “I will eat it, provided it is tender.” Ancient texts describe slaughterhouses, cow sacrifices at weddings, and the use of cows in constructing new houses. Distinguished guests—teachers, priests, kings, bridegrooms, or Vedic scholars returning from study—were presented with a sacrificial bull, and such guests were termed ghogna (“cow‑killers”). Smrti literature permitted consumption of all domestic animals with a single row of teeth, though the medical treatise Charaka Samhita advised against beef for the average person while recommending it for pregnant women.
The later prohibition on beef likely stemmed from a Brahmanic reaction to the rise of vegetarian Buddhism, which appealed to agrarian communities eager to protect their cattle wealth from hungry diners. The “cow as mother” motif emerged as propaganda to counter Buddhist influence. When University of Delhi scholar Dwijendra Narayan Jha published Holy Cow: Beef in Indian Dietary Traditions, proving ancient Indians ate beef, Hindu fundamentalists erupted in fury. One reviewer lamented that Jha’s work “contradicts the party line, which is that we Hindus have always been here in India and have never eaten cow; those Muslims have come in, and kill and eat cows, and therefore must be destroyed.”
2 Zoroastrian Food Restrictions
Pre‑Islamic Persian dietary laws derived from Zoroastrianism, which categorized foods as belonging to either the benevolent realm of Ohrmazd or the malevolent realm of Ahreman. Foods linked to Ahreman were typically consumed by foreigners and deemed sinful and impure. The Persian epic Shahnameh includes a letter from General Rostam‑e Farrokhzadan scolding Arabs for subsisting on “camel’s milk and lizards,” implying a cultural superiority of Persian cuisine.
Although the letter is a medieval addition absent from original Sassanid records, it reflects Zoroastrians’ disdain for Arab fare, which they portrayed as comprising mice, snakes, cats, foxes, tigers, hyenas, worms, and the ominous xrafstars (noxious creatures). A proverb warned, “The Arab of the desert eats locusts, while the dogs of Isfahan drink ice‑cold water.” The impure creatures were associated with Ahreman, believed to be mis‑created to plague the world. In contrast, the pure diet of Ohrmazd featured chicken, lamb, and beef. Although Persians eventually adopted Islam, culinary differences continued to fuel cultural tension for centuries. Persian poet Bashshar ibn Bord wrote in Arabic: “Never did [a Persian] sing, camel songs behind a scabby beast, nor pierce the bitter colocynth out of sheer hunger, nor dig a lizard out of the ground to eat….”
1 Aztec Protein
In pre‑Columbian Mexico, protein sources were scarce, as the Aztecs lacked domesticated livestock. Their primary protein came from squash, beans, and maize, supplemented by wild deer, whose numbers dwindled as the empire’s population swelled. The Aztecs, ever resourceful, turned to a plethora of alternative proteins: turkeys, fish, frogs, tadpoles, insects, rabbits, hares, armadillos, tapirs, gophers, axolotl salamanders, opossums, weasels, quails, snakes, iguanas, and dogs.
Hairless Mexican dogs, adapted to the tropical climate, served both as hunting companions and as a delicacy. Puppies were castrated, sold in markets, and consumed as a means to ward off nightmares, boost sexual potency, and protect against evil forces. The ancient Xoloitzcuintli breed, dating back over 3,000 years, is among the world’s oldest dogs. The modern Chihuahua descends from a sacred breed roasted for high priests. In merchant feasts, dog meat sometimes mingled with turkey, suggesting a Thanksgiving‑style dish you’ve never imagined.
Another protein powerhouse was tecuitlatl, dried algae loaves paired with maize and a chili‑tomato sauce. Boasting roughly 70 % protein, plus vitamins and minerals, this food was drought‑proof, stored easily, and could grow in saltwater, ensuring it never competed with other staple crops.
Imagine a modern banquet curated by David Tormsen: roast puppy glazed with garum and cannabis sauce, sacred onion rings, forbidden beans, and a steaming pitcher of holy beer‑porridge. Quite the feast for the adventurous palate!