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When did hominids start to decorate their food and do any other species do the same?
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Leo Coleman
Pratt Institiute, Brooklyn, New York, US
The origins of this practice are probably unknowable simply because styles of food preparation are imperfectly preserved in the fossil record, as food is eaten or rots. Also, learning something about cultural life from human evolution is famously difficult, and always underinclusive since how we do what we do is shaped by history and custom as much as genetics. And while all animals process their food in some way, often elaborately (like honeybees), the practice is clearly more important for humans.
Adorning a pie with a fancy crust or scattering herbs about a piece of chicken are symbolic acts. People say something by ornamenting food, messages that only partly relate to the food itself. We could ask why our species evolved to be able to communicate about edibility, say, with symbols rather than simply “sensing” whether the food was good or not. But symbols also lie – a fancy dressing can hide something rotten, and decorated food could harm rather than help survival.
Styles of food preparation and presentation tell us 'where we are', such as a birthday picnic or a wedding
One more philosophical answer to the question, then, offered by the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, is that preparing food helps us mark and manage differences between “raw” or “wild” nature and our own human condition of long-term dependence on others. Finally, all objects of human consumption are gathered, prepared and presented in some way, and how this is done helps us navigate our social world. Styles of preparation and presentation tell us “where we are” (such as a birthday picnic or a wedding), while also allowing us to play with these distinctions, such as serving humble food at a fancy event. As with all cultural practices, the question might not be, “when did this begin?”, but “where does it take us?” And the possibilities are nearly endless.
Graeme Ruxton
University of St Andrews, Fife, UK
The only non-human example of food decorating that comes close to this that I can think of is nuptial gifts by male spiders. Quite a few spiders have evolved such that the male presents the female with a tasty fly, and she lets him copulate with her while she is feeding on it. In some of these species, the male goes to the trouble of wrapping the gift in silk. But I am not sure this is strictly food decoration – I think it is more about slowing her feeding down, so he has more time to copulate before she shoos him away.
My guess is that a similar situation explains the evolution of food decoration in humans. Feeding someone is a big part of courtship in a lot of human cultures. I think you will get brownie points from a potential partner for offering food that is something they are familiar with – and so feel comfortable eating – but with a little twist to make it look like you are making a bit of extra effort. So, scattering some flower petals on the steak that you present is bound to impress. I think one of the keys to this is that how we see food influences how it tastes to us – hence why there are games where we taste foods blindfolded – so decorating food might make the meal tastier and more memorable, which has to be good from a courtship perspective.
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