How people first boiled food 

Prehistoric Adam: "Why I cook my pot and not my food"

“Adam, did you finish that terrace?” “No I’m making a clay pot.”

A lot of Native Americans, especially the Pacific West Natives used water tight baskets instead of clay vessels. These baskets are truly amazing and goes to show the in depth knowledge that the natives have of the plants around them as well as the artistic skill to make such intricate cooking baskets

I have a feeling that a kid was the one who discovered that wet clay was moldable. Adults saw the kids playing with the clay and saw that it held its shape really well and would start to experiment with it. Learning that it was easier to shape when wetter and stuff like that.

"Honey, the new neighbour is setting the hole on fire again..."

Drog: "What Grog doing with rock and fire?" Grog: "Inventing nixtamalization by treating corn in a caustic alkali"

Seeing the hole dug for the clay i thought that if people continuously used their pot boilers and leaves in the same hole wouldn't the surrounding clay eventually harden and even get fired?

Just to add: ceramic pots are still used today for cooking all over the world, the use of these vessels is not yet over. E.g. in the USA or Europe they use crookpots made from clay (and interestingly the commonly used Römertopf of Germany has to be watered before use but no idea about what has to be done to prepare US pots before cooking) mainly for slow cooking methods, and here in India many families use still their clay pots for daily cooking of rice and curries or just,to boil hot water for having bath. And of course, clay pots are not only in use for cooking but still widely used in hot regions like Rajasthan for keeping drinking water cool, since water passing through the clay and evaporating at the outer side of the vessel keeps the container naturally cooled.

damn, that kid's pipe sound effects are on-point

We are witnessing Adam’s slow descent into anarcho-primitivism.

There's a guy named David Good, whose mother is a Yanomami tribe member and I think they boil stuff in banana leaves or something. His dad was a professor who met his mom when he was in Venezuela, studying the tribe in the 80's. He brought her to the U.S and she stayed for 5 years, before deciding to go back to the tribe. The woman had never seen modern civilization before yet she managed to function and give birth to three kids in those five years. David traveled to Venezuela and reunited with his mom a few years ago. He has a RU-vid channel and he raises money to go back to the jungle and help the tribespeople. He answers all kinds of questions in the comments on his videos.

For the nixtamalization, you can also get a strong-enough base by simply adding ash to the boiled water. Like if you reused the water for boiling, and had the stones filled with ash, and sometimes even with live coals. I mean, if you know the fire is almost over, and you don't want it to keep going, you could let it consume itself entirely, you could cover it with dirt, you could stop it with water (which was precious away from water sources), or you could put the coals (with ash on them) into the water. And the archaeologists would likely not know, since people also uses water to extinguish the fire, sometimes. You just need to drop hot coals inside the boiling water, and the ash from the coals would turn the water into diluted lye (so basically boiling lye water), which would nixtamalize the maize. Oh, yeah, and maize was the name for corn in particular and corn was the name for grains, in the past, to make research more confusing. Or, they could simply start a fire around a stone which was hollowed out previously, like by grinding food (grains, nuts, fruits, vegetables, seeds, bark, and whatever else they had at their disposal). Just fill the hollowed-out large rock with water and the food you want to boil, and start a fire on a side or even entirely around it, and you have a pot. Sure, the rock might crack and the water run out, but by that time the food might be cooked. And, if not, they might try to eat that liquid, especially on cold days. And there are ways to make a disposable cup out of a single leaf, if the leaf was flexible enough, so drinking the hot liquid while it was still hot or warm would be very much possible. Just google-images "leaf cup" and "leaf cup cone" (which also works with some types of bark, like birch paper-bark), and you shall see how easy it is, and how many options there are. There are even leaves which grow naturally into a cup, so you don't need to do anything else than pick them up and use them to drink. Folding leaves might also be how origami first started!

This is how my dad says he used to make food

Clay pot? Throw in some animal fat, a potato, onions and carrots, piece of game meat and baby you got a stew goin'

Hey Adam! You can also make a "pot" out of bark - you fold it so that no water can run out. The soup-water will cool down the bark during the heating process so that it doesn't burn up. - quite similar to how you did it with the raw hide

If Adam ever does a collab with Ann Reardon, everyone's cooking knowledge will expand by leaps and bounds out of one video.

That Mario pipe sound effect was actually extremely accurate

"are you mario in a pipe?" "yes" that is so fucking adorable I'm gonna need a moment

Loving this video! I was already impressed with the leaves and the transfer rock method. Then the pottery thing started and that must have been SUCH a revolution for humanity. What I love about these old techniques is that whilst requiring skill, I could probably learn it and find the ingredients around me. Using just my two hands and nature. I would never be able to craft a CPU or something like that. And whilst one might be considered 'more advanced', the practicality and impact of making clay bowls to cook in is huge. I have mad respect for our ancestors for working all of this out, sharing it and working with the few tools they have.

Pretty sure you can boil stuff in a coconut husk. 😄 As a kid, I remember playing pretend cheffs around a bonfire. We just chucked one half of a coconut husk on a flame, filled it with water and random leaves, fruits and twigs. We also filled it with mud some other time. 😅 I think that might also be a possibility for ancient peoples to boil stuff. 😋🍲

It started as "haha, funny guy seasons his cutting board instead of the steak" and now I'm sitting here watching a video on something I never would've guessed I'd find interesting, purely because it's Adam talking about it

"Rain is slightly acidic" Countdown to recipes using rainwater

I am not good enough at making videos myself to tell you exactly how he does it but somehow this man answers all the questions I would've had and delivers them in the exact right tempo to keep my attention.

I really enjoyed this video, as I do all your videos; but especially I was interested in the part about clay pots. I had put on a whole playlist of your videos as I was working in the kitchen, and as I watched that part of the video I was cooking in a clay pot. I live in Tlaxcala, Tlaxcala, Mexico, and clay pots are still VERY much a thing down here. Clay pots, clay comales (round griddles), clay bowls, clay (terra cotta) drink mugs and pitchers. The traditional food mole (mo-lay) is a very big part of the local food tradition 'round here, and it's usually cooked in a large clay pot (like two or three feet wide) called a cazo (casso). Traditional stews are cooked in clay pots, and EVERYBODY will tell you that beans cooked in a clay pot are the only way to go, they have that 'special flavor.' (I can't taste the difference, but, hey...2,000 years of tradition and all that) Tlaxcala is 120% Mexican, and at the same time the home of the Tlaxcalteca people, who've lived here since around 1,100AD, and there were already people living and farming here since...you know...a couple thousand years before that. This is a place where traditional foods are still eaten (just in this state are around 124 different traditional and modern varieties of corn, 24 varieties of beans, 11 varieties of edible insects and grubs, a number of traditional squash and pumpkin varieties, not to mention an infinite variety of chilies and both modern and traditional tomato varieties including the apipisco, a blueberry sized and colored wild tomato). Terra cotta (clay) pots and other forns are still in use all over Mexico, Guatemala, Central America, and I'm sure other parts of the world. They're cheap and replaceable and they've got the same thermal advantages as cast iron. The glaze has been a problem historically, but hopefully that's getting better. If you don't cook acidic foods it's not so much of a problem, and I'm 68 years old, I'm pretty sure that something else will get me before the lead does. If you and your'n would ever like to come down and experience both real and historic Mexico let me know, I'd love to show you around.

the eternal human urge of seeing a hole and going "I should get in the hole"

I just watched a video of Mongolian "Boodog" and they used a goats entire body as a sort of makeshift stewpot for the meat that had been butchered. At the end you're left with an entire edible carcass with a stew inside. idk how old it is but it's worth a mention.

I grew up on a farm that had adobe soil. (Adobe being very similar to clay/brick material; ie. adobe pots.) One of the first things you notice when you have animals on adobe soil is that any footprint made in the wet means you will have a rock hard divot when the ground dries. That divot actually remains until the ground becomes saturated enough, often enough that the clay eventually slumps back to refill said hole. This can take several years, if the divot was made in a place that doesn't experience lots of sitting or moving water. Imagine you come across a nice hole about the size of your fist, but 6-8" deep, filled with water from a recent rain. Sounds like the perfect place to drop some hot rocks and soup ingredience, if you ask me. Or perhaps the weather has dried out such a hole. Voila! Instant pot, just add water and soup ingredience. Now imagine you create a fire that just happens to be over one of those clay divots, or simply over clay, after the ground has gotten wet. What happens to the clay ground from under your fire, after your fire dies out? Of course, this is just speculation based on my own experiences. However, eventually someone is going to notice these convenient hardened clay spots. Especially since many hunter gatherers tended to return to the same camping spots multiple times as they followed the herds.

Man, this channel went from a recipe channel to a full out science food stuff, I love it

"Are you Mario in the pipe?" *yes*

Something interesting on this: my ancestors (Chetco and Tututni people from southern Oregon/northern California) didn't have good earth for clay, so instead we developed baskets that were woven so tightly they were waterproof. Just like the animal skin, the water inside protected these baskets from burning so they could be used right over the fire. Cool!

Thank you, I'm starting to cook for myself and your videos are easy and interesting. I appreciate that each one teaches you beyond the scope of the recipe, so I'm learning how to build from basics

man this show just gets better and better. I love the evolution of the content!

At this point Adam should just collaborate with How to Make Everything.

Damn this is some sweet archaeology content

As an archaeologist, I have to say that this is great content! Well done 👍🏻

I love this style of documentary and archeological content, thanks Adam!

Water dripped through wood ash also makes lye. Old fashioned "Lye soap" was made by dripping water through hardwood ash from the fireplace, and cooking the resulting lye water with rendered animal fat. Adam, you likely have families within thirty miles of you that still make their everyday soap this way. As you were describing the ashy pot boilers and nixtamalization, I thought, why not this way?

"Rain is acidic" Adam starts only drinking rainwater from now on

Wonderful video. I really enjoy the narrative videos and taking the time and effort to actually make your own pot was well worth it.

8:13 why i knead my pot not my dough

"Why i season my rock, not my soup."

This guy is so educational and entertaining at the same time

Your script is just so precise and accurate.....just satisfying to watch and listen.

Cool video, good research on all the info. I feel to add, we most likely soaked our grains before cooking. This makes them cool quicker and easier to digest.

This is a brilliant idea for a video

Can we take a moment to appreciate that the kid has a pretty good sound effect going on? That clip was cute

I’ve watched and loved your videos for about a year and then you went and made a Dead Kennedy’s pun and made it so much better

You love teaching. And you do it in a way that makes people want to listen to you. I feel like I'm in class and I appreciate and enjoy the experience. Pretty awesome really. Thank you

Ash is flavoring. In the cookbook "sioux chef" there is a recipe for culinary ash. It has a peppery flavor. It was part of the paleo pantry. Also bison bladders were used for carrying and storing water. No reason they couldn't have been used as a cooking vessel.

"Are you mario in the pipe?" "Yes." An exact conversation I've had with my kid, with the same hat on.

honestly everytime i watch a video from yours, its actually more interesting than the last one. it's really an amazing work

This is a fantastic video! I was literally wondering if this could have been the origin of nixtamalization right before you said it in the video! Very informative.

“In the beginning, there was no soup…” genesis 1:1

“This is at least one of the ways people simmered food for thousands of years” Geez it took thousands of years to make?

I suspect the pit in the clay deposit was the the first "bowl". Dig a hole, put a fire in it, boom, pottery hole. Fun video!

Thank you for the daily dose of gratitude I received by looking around me and my kitchen to see how far our people have come!

"I added some rain water. The acidity adds a kind of freshness. And for the bits of rock and ash, Heterogeneity!"

Your kid's mario impression sounds just like a baby gator, that's adorable.

Holy hell, this is exactly the type of information and content I have been searching for and craving! Thanks so much!

Thank you for your research and compiling all the information you do on all the subjects you do keep it up

There is a regional dish in northern Oaxaca in México, called "Caldo de Piedra" it is a Mazatecan people's dish, using fresh water shrimp, fish and vegetables, they heat up the stones and they put them in your pot until it cooks, it has become popular now due to tourism and how Oaxaca has become really popular in the last decade, not bad actually, very exotic to eat it the first time, I can recommend it was an experience one should try.

It’s amazing how intelligent and innovative our ancestors were, just like we are when we get into a position of necessity. There’s a video about making knives from rocks and making rope from scratch, and man, if that doesn’t humble you and make you grateful for what our ancestors did to lift us out of the wild over hundreds of thousands of years, you’re just not thinking about it.

More thoughts on the first fired pottery: some firebuilding traditions involve putting the fire in a hole in the ground to avoid problems from the wind, and also hiding the smoke and flames from anyone around. It also gives you a great way to suspend your cooking vessel just by having a stick across the ground level. Just have some damp clay in there and you would get that extra hard pit, from which someone could have the idea of firing any clay vessel.

7:48 That's so cute, the kid nailed the sound effect.

THEY JUST STUCK IT IN A POT AND BOILED IT!!!

Good ancient cooks would have used two containers of water: one to dip the ash-covered rock into to give it a quick first rinsing, then the second to dump the rinsed but still hot rock into the actual cooking water. When the first container gets too dirty, dump it out and add more water. It does add to the time needed to heat up the 2nd container of water, but the 1st container only holds the rock long enough to swish it clean.

Adam reminds me of Alton Brown. His show Good Eats on the science of cooking was one of my favorite shows growing up! Thank you for keeping me curious.

I am so fascinated by the evolution of not just us as an organism, but how we ate. It really is interesting to find out how we as a species discovered and developed how to cook food!

6:55 just to clarify, clay is specifically formed with the weathering of feldspars and the mixing with other stones and bio gunk (dirt, leaves, wood etc). other stones being worn down do not create clay, you NEED the eventual products of feldspar, mainly, Alumina, to create clay.

7:46 the Italian blood never lost it's force in the family

I like how this channel incorporates science and history into the cooking theme

I mean, you are taking cooking video to other places and it's so cool and instructive, Thank you !

Man I love how Adam is a cooking channel and a food studies channel. I love it, it’s like a mixture of Vsauce and to be honest there’s no real cooking channel like his.

What I love is that the creation of pottery is really what is meant by "stone age" (which is now a pretty outdated term), but also, each separate society(?) thousands of years ago all discovered/invented pottery independently from one other, at roughly (relatively speaking) the same time. It seems to be the first, necessary step towards "civilisation" (and each society followed the same steps in the same order in similar timeframes).

always put lots of effort in your videos. You are probably one of the big reasons I study nutrition at university.

this video is so fuckin cool. been watching all of these monday videos ever since you started them and i don't think there has been one i haven't enjoyed, but this recent anthropology arc has been fantastic to watch. keep it up!

I'm Finnish. Pot-boiling is still used here when making an old-style beer called Sahti.

the thought and effort you put into your videos is amazing!!

Dead Kennedys reference caught me way off guard! You’ve won bonus points today.

While I appreciate your joke about trademarking the term "Stone Age", I think my countryman, the Danish archaeologist Christian Jürgensen Thomsen deserves recognition. He was the first to notice that the material of the tools found when digging were ordered in layers, and the further down you went, the farther back in time. He's the one who formulated the system of dividing up the ancient past in the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages ... a system that is used worldwide today.

As a geologist, great explanation on the formation of clay! When a rock formed deep into the Earth resurfaces, its formation conditions, higher temperatures and pressures, changes to lower temperatures and pressures. With the addition of more free water and oxygen, the least stable minerals (minerals formed in really high T-P conditions) are often weathered away. What usually remains, after some time and the right conditions, is a soil rich with clay minerals and quartz (but that also depends on the original rock)

Love these little food science and history vids

Here in Brazil we have several dishes that still require a ceramic pot. It has very interesting thermal caractstics that result in great hen stews, for instance.

The Dead Kennedys reference really got me (5:03)

This video is awesome. I've been thinking about the origins of cooking lately. Imagine the minds that were blown when the first dude used sea water to cook stuff.

adam you're a blessing on this earth and this accursed platform thank you for your work

Dead Kennedy's reference! You got Jello in your soup. Good job, Adam.

I am in love with the historical explanation videos Adam. the fact that you try the methods yourself is even better! ever think about subjects like "how we found out that oil can be derived from foods" or "the rise of olive oil"?

Love these food history/Science Vids by Adam

I have to chuckle at this video, because it really demonstrates the ethnocentric approach toward anthropology. If you examine what many other agricultural cultures do now, you'll find that many of them take grains soaked in water, wrap them in leaves, and then cook them. With the lack of cooking utensils, they were likely just placed on hot stones next to the fire. My parents grew up in the jungles of Laos (as in literally in the jungles), and cooked rice wrapped in banana leaves were common. It was also a good way to have "food on the go", as the leaves would preserve the shape, so you could eat it (like a granola bar) while out farming, hunting, etc. Soaked grains wrapped in leaves and cooked on stones is the more probable / plausible hypothesis here, given it's prevalence in many cultures today.

Love how you combine theory, research, and actual hands-on experiments for your videos. Incredibly informative and interesting for the casual viewer. One of the best channels I've come across on RU-vid. Cheers!

7:52 beta male: "are you mario in the pipe?" the beta male is obviously unsure and is oblivious of what the sigma male is doing sigma male: "Yes." the sigma male is showing his dominance over the beta with his confident and straighforward answer

I'm from Brazil. It's a tradition in my state - Bahia - to cook fish and shrimp stews using a clay pot. Love the video!

That was the smoothest ad read transition I've ever seen, nicely done.

Can I just say, I really appreciate that Adam is so well spoken that the autogenerated subtitles pick up what he says *perfectly*. I very rarely see that and I appreciate it so much. The video is fantastic as well, this is some of the best content I've seen in a while!

That Dead Kennedys reference was greatly appreciated.

Please do more video like this ! It’s amazing

I had a few "wow, I learned something cool!" Moments throughout the whole video, so i subscribed

when i first subscribed i would have never imagined the content of this channel to become literally food not just cooking it but its history information about it facts... etc. and i am loving it it is so unique and innovative thank you adam for such amazing content

I'm increasingly impressed by this channel. Every video entertains and informs. And the overall trajectory of quality just seems to go up and up. I'm not a "food guy" in a general sense, or I didn't think I was, but I'm very glad I found this channel.