The Beginnings of Agriculture: The Ancient Near East and North Africa

The Sumerians may have said it best: “Food: That’s the thing! Drink: That’s the thing!” (Gordon 1959: 142). From bread and beer to wine and cheese, the people of the ancient Near East and North Africa developed a rich cuisine based on a set of crops and livestock domesticated in Southwest Asia, and a sophisticated technology of food preparation and preservation. This chapter traces the history of diet and food of hunter-gatherers who lived at the end of the Stone Age in the Near East and North Africa, the impact of the development and the spread of agriculture, and the social context of food and drink in early Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilization.