A VEGETARIAN PAST

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22468, 11 July 1936, Page 6 (Supplement)

A VEGETARIAN PAST

WHEN WE LIVED IN TREES OLDEST FOODS ON EARTH Barley is tho oldest known cereal. Thousands of years ago men knew its nutritive properties. Much later, at the time when Homer wrote tho Iliad and Odyssey, and when Greek culture had already attained a notable degree of development, did they begin to cultivate rye as a grain food. This happened about 800 B.C. Wheat is only a little over a hundred years old as a food.* Next to barley, lentil was probably tho oldest edible seed, although it is 3000 years younger—just as okl is the first fermented beverage, beer. They brewed it in Egypt 3000 yoars B.C. Tho oldest known vegetables, cabbage and beans, are 300 years younger. Wo are almost certain that the first man led an arboreal existence, even as monkeys do to-day, and that ho lived on the roots and fruits of field and wood, in so far as ho did not devour tho raw meat of other creatures. The applo is only 2000 years old, and the stalks of tho celery plant wore eaten for the first time during the Trojan War. The first mashed peas probably dato from Homer's time, when men also learned to appreciate the fineness of wine and figs. Bice became known in Europe under Alexander the Great, also fruits such as plums, cherries and peaches. A new impetus was given to the foodstuffs industry and trade with the dis-

covery of the New World. Unsuspected possibilities opened with every new arrival In 1500 they ate the first green peppers in Europe; the pineapple came in 1514, coffee in 1517 and chocolate and corn in 1520. Tobacco came only 40 years later, and the first potatoes were imported into England in 1585. Cloves and , tea were mentioned for the | first time during the Thirty j Years' War, cinnamon in 1780, and the cranberry be- | came popular during the I Napoleonic Wars. The Euro- | pean centenary of the banana \ will be celebrated five years \ from now.