Food History: From Prehistory to the Modern Age

This course offers a broad and engaging history of food, tracing humanity’s relationship with eating from prehistory to the modern world. Beginning before 10,000 BC, it explores how hunting, gathering, cooking, and early farming shaped human evolution and the first settled societies. From there, the course follows food through the rise of early civilizations, classical Greece and imperial Rome, and the long medieval centuries that transformed agriculture, trade, and daily diets.

Students will travel across regions including India, Central Asia, China, the Arab world, Europe, and the Americas, examining how climate, geography, religion, and exchange influenced what people ate and how food moved across cultures. The course also explores food and travel, the emergence of gastronomy, and the ways global encounters reshaped cuisines in the New World.

In its later sections, the course examines the Industrial Revolution, scientific advances, and modern food supply systems, leading into contemporary tensions around abundance, scarcity, and food identity. Rather than focusing on recipes or nutrition, this course treats food as a historical force — one that reveals how societies function, adapt, and change over time.

May this course leave you curious, thoughtful, and more connected to the long history that quietly shapes what we eat today!