The History of Soup

Archeologists once thought that humans didn’t start making soup until around 5,000 to 9,000 years ago, largely because it was thought that heatproof and waterproof containers weren’t created until around this time. However, after archeologists discovered a 20,000-year-old pottery from a cave in China in the early 2010s, historians reevaluated this belief. Since there is evidence that the recovered pottery was used in a fire, it is now thought that humans were probably boiling things much earlier in history. Whether they were making soup or something else, such as alcohol, is unclear. Additionally, it is scientifically possible that humans may have used containers made from tree bark or animal hide to boil things even earlier in history. Some historians argue that Neanderthals, who lived from around 200,000 to 28,000 years ago, likely needed to boil animal bones to render the fat from them in order to avoid death from protein poisoning. If this is true, they may have consumed the broth, making soup a truly ancient human food source. While evidence of pottery that may have been used to boil foods has been found in eastern Asia, this predated similar technologies in western Asia. And in the Western world, where bread originated, boiling animal bones to render the fat may have been less necessary overall, since the carbohydrates in the wheat products balanced out western-dwelling humans’ protein intake. Additionally, in some parts of the world with hunter-gatherer populations, there was no long-standing tradition of boiling foods at all. In fact, in areas like Tanzania and the Kalahari, tribes didn’t boil water at all until after Europeans arrived. While it isn’t currently possible to pinpoint exactly when humans first began to make soup, some archaeologists think that humans could have been making it as far back as 25,000 years ago, at least in some parts of the world. As cooking technology improved, soup became an increasingly important part of the human diet. Today, it is one of the most widespread dishes and helps nourish humans all over the world.