This archeologist discovered that meats like mutton and beef featured heavily in the cuisine of the Indus Valley Civilisation. Her findings caused beef with certain sections of the internet.
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00:00And so people have found the animal bones of cattle, water buffalo, and then you find
00:05butchery marks and even charring marks on the bones of a lot of these.
00:09And that's when you make assumptions about whether they've been cut and consumed.
00:14I think something that this paper illustrated is how fundamental food is to our lives and
00:19how, you know, how we are so much of what we eat becomes personal and political so easily.
00:30I can't tell you what specific dishes people in the civilization ate, I wish I could, but
00:58I can tell you that they had access to really a wide variety of ingredients.
01:11Definitely cereals like wheat, barley, millets, even rice, and a whole range of different
01:18types of millets, actually.
01:24Pulses, like lentils, chickpeas, horseradish, moong bean, even peas.
01:33Fruits, they're a bit harder to find, but they're there, like zizifus.
01:48We have evidence of some vegetables through starch analysis, like aubergine, and even
01:52spices like turmeric.
01:59And then, of course, they probably consumed dairy products and the meat of different animals
02:06like cattle, sheep, goat, pigs, even deer.
02:11And fresh water products like fish, and even marine products, especially those communities
02:18that lived by the sea, but we have evidence of trade of marine fish as well.
02:24So it's a really big, it's a balanced diet.
02:35And so people have found the animal bones of cattle, water buffalo, it's actually hard
02:39to distinguish between the two.
02:41That's why they're often said, I say cattle or water buffalo.
02:45Similarly, sheep or goat, because it's hard to distinguish between the bones of the two.
02:50Pigs, birds, fish, and different reptiles.
02:54And then you find butchery marks and even charring marks on the bones of a lot of these,
03:00and that's when you make assumptions about whether they've been cut and consumed.
03:12Yes, I was quite surprised by some of the very strong reactions.
03:16And I mean, I definitely received a lot of positive reactions and people were really
03:21sort of excited and happy about it.
03:23And that made me really excited to see people engage with the paper.
03:28But I was a bit frustrated that some of the news reports and the social media response
03:32was really misinterpreting and kind of misrepresenting the research as well.
03:41So what you do is you take a small piece of the pottery, you clean it, and essentially
03:50you powder it, you need about two grams of it.
03:54And in the lab, then, you use a protocol that involves different solvents to extract lipids,
04:01which are fats, oils, and waxes from the powder.
04:05And then it's through comparison of actually different products that we already know the
04:11signatures of, that you can identify what was originally in the vessel.
04:16So some of the products that you identify very easily are plant waxes, animal fats,
04:24fish products, and even beeswax.
04:27I think something that this paper illustrated is how fundamental food is to our lives, and
04:32how we are so much of what we eat.
04:37And food is not just about the body, it's such a huge aspect of our social lives.
04:43And it becomes personal and political so easily.
04:47But I think knowing the history and origins of the food we eat is so interesting and so
04:52important because it really shows us how diverse and complex our food was and is, and where
05:00it's come from.
05:02Because the different food that we think is fundamental to our identity today has traveled
05:07from, you know, has come a long way.