Quote from: Ghostmaker;1127425Let's not forget salt. Salt was such an important resource that early on, Roman legionnaires were paid in it.

Salting, drying and curing meat definitely lets it last longer.

Greetings!

Oh yes, salting of meats is very useful. And indeed, Salt has been enormously valuable through history. Pepper as well!

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Quote from: jeff37923;1127426Take a massive chunk of ice from a mountain top, place it in a container, place insulator around it (straw, wool, etc.), and haul it to where the open air market is and place it in an ice house. IIRC, ice houses were found in 1780BC, so they have been around for quite some time.

There is even a Wikipedia entry on them.

EDIT:
Actually, a Yakhchal might be better suited for your border town.

Greetings!

Holy fucking corndogs, Jeff!:D The Yakhchal!! Damn, I love learning about historical stuff like this! Our ancestors were creative fucking geniuses. I have always believed that ancient peoples were far more advanced and accomplished than many modern historians often like to attribute to them and give them credit for. My god. How did this technology not spread all over the place? Imagine what this does to your typical town, you know?

Just awesome stuff, Jeff. I'm using this thing in my campaign. Damn yes. My players jaws are gonna drop when they get a load of this thing here! Fucking Yakhchal That is just so awesome and cool, you know? And all done without magic to boot! Hah hah! So awesome!

I have always known the Persian Empire was badass, and awesome. They were uber advanced, had all kinds of quality of life technologies and processes that made them the uber society of their age. Living in the fucking Iranian deserts, to boot! I have read of special engineering canals, pipes and drain systems they figured out to pump water from hundreds of miles away, to cities in the desert, all doing it with engineered pipes, set into underground channels and using leverage, slope, angles, raising and lowering water, all using it to create subterranean water systems to provide water constantly, for hundreds of thousands of people. In the cities in the desert. In 1000 BC.

And operating sewer systems, paved roads, reservoirs, all kinds of mind-boggling inventions and technology that made them just badass and cool.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Drying, smoking, salting, putting stuff in brine barrels and the like are all tried and true techniques. It can be used for vegetables and meat.

Quote from: SHARK;1127448Greetings!

Holy fucking corndogs, Jeff!:D The Yakhchal!! Damn, I love learning about historical stuff like this! Our ancestors were creative fucking geniuses. I have always believed that ancient peoples were far more advanced and accomplished than many modern historians often like to attribute to them and give them credit for. My god. How did this technology not spread all over the place? Imagine what this does to your typical town, you know?

Just awesome stuff, Jeff. I'm using this thing in my campaign. Damn yes. My players jaws are gonna drop when they get a load of this thing here! Fucking Yakhchal That is just so awesome and cool, you know? And all done without magic to boot! Hah hah! So awesome!

I have always known the Persian Empire was badass, and awesome. They were uber advanced, had all kinds of quality of life technologies and processes that made them the uber society of their age. Living in the fucking Iranian deserts, to boot! I have read of special engineering canals, pipes and drain systems they figured out to pump water from hundreds of miles away, to cities in the desert, all doing it with engineered pipes, set into underground channels and using leverage, slope, angles, raising and lowering water, all using it to create subterranean water systems to provide water constantly, for hundreds of thousands of people. In the cities in the desert. In 1000 BC.

And operating sewer systems, paved roads, reservoirs, all kinds of mind-boggling inventions and technology that made them just badass and cool.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

My pleasure. I run across lots of nifty things when researching for games. This was a useful "dead end" to some of my medieval distilling research.

The thing I've found is that as long you don't attribute any radical or innovative designs by ancient cultures to van Dannikanism*, you find that human beings are really inventive. For fantasy games, that includes solving every thorny problem with magic.

*van Dannikanism - any truly unique and advanced designs from the past could not be made by humans, but are the products of alien technology

Quote from: jeff37923;1127453My pleasure. I run across lots of nifty things when researching for games. This was a useful "dead end" to some of my medieval distilling research.

The thing I've found is that as long you don't attribute any radical or innovative designs by ancient cultures to van Dannikanism*, you find that human beings are really inventive. For fantasy games, that includes solving every thorny problem with magic.

*van Dannikanism - any truly unique and advanced designs from the past could not be made by humans, but are the products of alien technology

Add my approval to Shark's, jeff. I consider any day that I learn something totally new to be a good one. Today is a good day indeed.

A nonpowered icemaker in the middle of the Persian Empire. Color me dumbstruck and impressed.

Ancient Egyptians made ice daily, by laying innumerable shallow pans of water out in the dessert just before dawn. The rapidly rising air temperature as the sun rose caused the water to start evaporating fast enough to freeze the top layer through evaporative cooling. Then innumerable slaves collected the innumerable thin sheets of ice, stacked them into blocks, and hauled them inside to chill stuff for the day.

Obviously aliens taught them this non-euclidean technique.

What else could it be?

Jeff, thank you for the Yakhchal info! Absolutely amazing.

Conan can finally enjoy gelato!

Quote from: SHARK;1127448Our ancestors were creative fucking geniuses. I have always believed that ancient peoples were far more advanced and accomplished than many modern historians often like to attribute to them and give them credit for. My god.

I attribute it to three things:
1) There have smart, creative, inventive people in every generation.
2) Necessity is the mother of invention (and some say, laziness is the father)
3) There was no TV (aka, their free time wasn't being devoured by an idiot box)

Quote from: SHARK;1127448How did this technology not spread all over the place?

Because everyone in the past knew cultural appropriation was wrong!

You bring up an excellent question. It is very strange why some inventions traveled far and wide, while inventions of equal or perhaps even greater value, stayed in their own area or were even forgotten by their own people. It's odd.

Quote from: Melan;1127418Also, the old adage stands: the history of human gastronomy is the history of trying to creatively reuse spoiled or suspicious food. From spoiled milk comes yogurt, from spoiled ogurt comes cheese, from spoiled cheese come roquefort and camembert. Beer, wine, and bread are all products of things that had gone bad due to being left out too long, and some ancestor of ours looking at the fermented results, asking "Am I hungry enough to try that?".

THIS can't be overstated enough. Food (the most important resource) was always going bad. It took so much effort to raise animals, raise crops or hunt for meat and what happened next? Anything you didn't eat right away was on a short timer. Thus, man was forced to figure out what to do with rotting food (and plenty of people died in the process).

BTW, comedian Joe Mande does a funny bit about the first guy to drink milk and eat cheese
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZtwUpPSdt0&t=55s

EDIT: Mande's clip is NSFW.

Part of the reason things get lost and discoveries that you'd think would be big just seem to putter out is various.

There is the age old problem of "craftsmans secrets" and the urge to hoard techniques. Sometimes its for a reason. To get others to come up with new techniques too. But for some its just an excuse to hoard techniques. Guilds, organizations, etc even might want to keep a technique or inventions fabrication method to themselves. I've seen this in the costuming areas. And it used to be a major thing with some companies to keep their processes a secret.

Suppression by opposition can be another cause. This could be a rival craftsman, guild or business who does not want competition. Hell its still prevalent in the gaming biz. Or it might be suppressed because some group gets it in their head that this invention is bad somehow.

The technique or invention is somehow not easy to reproduce outside its inventors radius. This could be due to the area itself, the need for a specific skillset, it too time consuming vs other methods, or is otherwise not cost or time effective.

A good example might be watchmaking and repairing. The knowlegde and skills needed to design and craft a watch are very complex as is the skills to repair them. Depending on the era there was often a period of apprenticeship to learn the skills needed that could span many years depending on the tasks and teacher.

With food prep techniques Id guess sometimes the reasons are much the same. Hoarding secrets, suppression of competition, belief, or some complexity in getting stuff done that makes it hard to catch on.

Quote from: Zalman;1127575Ancient Egyptians made ice daily, by laying innumerable shallow pans of water out in the dessert just before dawn. The rapidly rising air temperature as the sun rose caused the water to start evaporating fast enough to freeze the top layer through evaporative cooling. Then innumerable slaves collected the innumerable thin sheets of ice, stacked them into blocks, and hauled them inside to chill stuff for the day.

I looked up the system and the related pit cooler sounds very close to that odd buried ice technique my great grandparents used. Maybee they made the ice too themselves. Sadly its something that I'll now never be able to uncover the reason or extent of.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1127717I attribute it to three things:
1) There have smart, creative, inventive people in every generation.
2) Necessity is the mother of invention (and some say, laziness is the father)
3) There was no TV (aka, their free time wasn't being devoured by an idiot box)

Are you practicing British understatement?

On #3--I'd say that they had no appreciable "free time" as we would use the term.  For them, "free time" is mostly "things I don't have to do right now to survive" so that I'll spend it on "things that if I do right now might mean I'll survive next week or next month or if things are going really well, this winter."

And then summarizing a lot of what has been said:  People are people, and always have been.  That includes the people that prompted the fable of the scorpion stinging the frog in the river, killing them both.  It's in the nature of some people to screw things up, and even things like living through next winter isn't enough to get them to stop.  I suspect that if we could view through time, we'd find plenty of examples of someone coming up with a great technique that was lost because someone else had their furs in a bunch--maybe even for reasons as trivial as they didn't think of it first.

Safe is relative.  I was In Turkey eating at a....restaurant...in a very open air environment.  The meat was hanging (whole goat) right there near where the dude was cooking.  Flies all over, and LOTS of pepper and spices.  Look at the wet markets of china, animals are kept alive till killed, and once killed the meat is right there at room temp.  I suspect the people who eat food prepared this way on a regular basis have immune systems that account for methods, that in the USA would get you raided.   I assume adventurers of some sort in the OP post.  Life on the road and iron stomachs are the best defense in such environments.  I know the after hours eatery we went to at 3:30 AM had no animals hanging, but only the gods know how long the meat they were serving had been cooked before I ate it.

Ancient world/middle ages though I know the romans salted meat to preserve it (soldiers were often payed in salt).  As well as heavy use of spices and spicy fish sauce.  Again safe is relative, and I do not know how a 21st century gut would fare the first few weeks of eating ancient world prepared eatery fare.  Eating out was a good deal more common than I thought among many citizens, free men and slaves.  The wealthy tended to eat at home, and some wealthier city plebs might have the space for preparing and eating meals at home, but lots of people ate at eateries or bazaars.  Ancient Rome had a million people in it, and though plagues would break out from time to time, I do not think it was old/bad food spreading sickness.

Meanwhile, gourmet restaurants charge astronomical prices for "aged steaks", with most chefs agreeing that the meat is best after sitting around and molding for 30-45 days.

Here's an interesting related tidbit from my travels in Nepal: the Nepalese people prepare their food very carefully and cleanly -- there are strict rules for all stages of preparation. All very sanitary. But, these rules are seen as religious, and there was no concept of them being for the purpose of sanitation or health. Thus, they only apply to food prepared for Hindus. A pizza restaurant in Kathmandu, for example, would feel fine about ignoring the rules of sanitation, because only westerners eat at their establishment. So, travelers got sick all the time, except for the ones that ate exclusively local fare.