Ancient food are absurdly complicated.
Ancient food are absurdly complicated.
People can grow vegetables and simply eat. But bread is way too complicated.
There is a bakers' dozen of big steps to go from wheat into bread. And multiple special structures needed too.
Same with beer. Wine makes total sense but how do you even invent ale? How are these common foods everyone knows and uses?
I was thinking "imagine if mediveal people knew how to boil seawater and sell salt" and now I spent 20 extra minutes in the shower.
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Medieval people totally knew how to boil water and leave salt behind, and the most basic bread was probably an accidebtal discover when people used to put hard grains in water to soften them, someone had the idea to ambush them first
People back then were just as smart as people now. Knowledge accumulates slowly over time and that's that limits progress. We discover things slowly but once we know them we discover even bigger things I'm a feedback loop.
They knew you could, but mostly didn't because it takes a ton of energy to boil off water. There was no petroleum, no coal, so you would need a bunch of wood. So you use a bunch of wood to boil a liter of ocean water and you would get about 35 grams of salt. It just wasn't worth it.
But why not let a bucket of water vaporise by it self? There are plenty of hot days during a year, and you don't need salt immediately.
We're cooking on the shoulders of giants.