GLUTTONY

                                                                    Eating Ourselves Sick

                                                                   By John Mariani

        That some of the earliest art in prehistory is so consistently devoted to hunting, preserved and protected deep within Stone Age caves proves the symbolic importance of the activity as a form of story-telling with both practical and mythical associations. To go by the depictions of such hunts in cave paintings (the oldest date to about 35,000 years ago) in sites like Cantabria, Spain, and Lascaux, France, the figures of hunted animals are not only sophisticated in their artfulness but also robust, colorful and realistic, showing the sheer, massive bulk of the prey. The hunters at Lascaux (left) were instead drawn as kinetic figures of good physique, but  a cave painting in Morella la Vella, Spain (right), from the Late Magdalenian Period (15,000-10,000 BC) shows fighting archers looking more like praying mantises than human beings, with less flesh on them than a Giacometti sculpture. A hundred-yard long rock panel, discovered in 2011, known as the Sea Island Petroglyph in Utah shows Navajo and Ute tribe depictions of hunters and horned animals from 6,000 BC to about 1350 AD that give both the same, more natural scale and bodily bulk.
       Homo sapiens were not emaciated, and hunters of the period of the cave paintings were certainly stocky, like today’s Southern Mediterranean males, though in Africa they might have been as tall, lean and wiry as Maasai warriors, who originated in the southern Nile Valley. 
       In contrast, the small female figures carved from soft stone found in many of the caves and other sites were usually fat to the point of what we would today call morbid obesity. Some have small heads and tapered waistlines, but usually the breasts, stomach and thighs are those of a very fat, perhaps pregnant woman. They have been dubbed “venus figurines,” the name of the Greek goddess of love and beauty bestowed on them by Frenchman Paul Hurault, who in 1864 discovered the first such figurines in France’s Vézère Valley  (left), which, curiously, have no facial features, perhaps suggesting a universal woman rather than an individual.
       There are no accepted theories as to why these females were depicted in such bloated ways: conjectures have ranged from their being an exaggerated anatomical reverence of fertility or as powerful earth mother goddesses.* Archaeologists who discovered an 8,000 year-old bovine female figurine with pendulous breasts at Catalhoyuk, Turkey, have surmised that she was not a fertility goddess but a representation of an older woman who had achieved status among her people (right). There has even been a quirky suggestion that they were made by adolescent boys fueled by their hormone-driven fantasies.  There is certainly nothing to suggest that actual hard-working Paleolithic women had access to so much food that they could gorge and bulk up to such tremendous size while their mates remained thin. A bit of extra food allowed or encouraged for a pregnant woman might have made sense, but allowing a female to gorge did not. Sharing everything was the key to survival in Paleolithic times. 

* Although such figurines were a deliberate exaggeration, the idea behind them is borne out by modern studies of how society views women’s curvaceousness. According to an article in the Journal of Biological Psychology  (March 2005), "Hip size indicates pelvic size and the amount of additional fat storage that can be used as a source of energy. Waist size conveys information such as current reproductive status or health status ... in westernized societies with no risk of seasonal lack of food, the waist, conveying information about fecundity and health status, will be more important than hip size for assessing a female's attractiveness.”

 

 

       The popular idea of a fit, muscular caveman leaving his family to hunt and then return to a small extended family tending the children is not so farfetched. Indeed, it appears that among Paleolithic hunter-gatherers the acquisition of meat by male members of a community was considered of such crucial importance for its survival that everyone shared equally in its  consumption, without favoritism or hierarchy. In his book Affluence Without Abundance: The Disappearing world of the Bushmen (2017), anthropologist James Suzman writes that the Bushmen of Namibia and Botswana (left) still engage in a ritual of “insulting the meat” brought back by the hunter, so that “the sum of individual self-interest and the jealousy that policed it was a fiercely egalitarian society where profitable exchange, hierarchy, and significant material inequality were not tolerated.”   In other words, the idea of one boastful male claiming a bigger share or a choicer cut of the meat as his right is stopped short as soon as he arrives back at camp hoisting the meat from his shoulder.
       There was, then, a division of labor among hunter-gatherer tribes, both before and after agriculture came to dominate human history. Before, each member had his or her job, the hunter to hunt, the women to gather and cook, the children and elderly to maintain the premises around the fire camp. “The exchange and sharing of food meant that the one who gives today can expect to receive tomorrow,” write Peter Farb and George Armelagos, “and from that expectation stem reciprocal obligations, rules to enforce fair sharing, and marital ties between kin groups to make sharing permanent. The human family probably could not have risen without those early and simple steps toward the sharing of food."     
    The authors go on to explain that among the Copper Eskimo tribe of central Canada, each hunter agrees upon nineteen cuts of the kill prior to the hunt. Upon the presentation of the prey, the hunter’s wife parcels out the cuts to recipients called by the cut he receives—“Stomach-Meat-Companion,” “Neck Companion,” “Liver Companion” and so on—a ritual called nippiqtug, meaning “he waits to get his share.”* (Still, the Inuit do have a specific word for gluttony: nerretunerk.)

    

* It was to be expected that Hollywood scriptwriters and producers had no use for such tribal niceties, instead depicting grunting cave men and cosmetically enhanced women in movies like One Million B. C. (1940 and 1966), Prehistoric Women (1960), Valley of the Dragons (1961) and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970) showing the dominant males of the tribe fighting over meals—including dinosaur meat—while throwing scraps to the rest and treating the females, with shaven legs and armpits, like slaves.

 

       How human beings went from such selfless sharing to arguing, even battling over the spoils of a hunt or harvest, subsequently leading to a future prospect of gluttonous behavior, is the story of man’s settling down into villages, towns, cities and, ultimately, nations. It began about 40,000 years ago, after humans had become so successful hunting animals like wild horses, cave lions and woolly mammoths that some large animal species began to die off, many hunted to extinction.  Even the expansion of hunting grounds after the end of the Ice Age did not slow a  decrease in game that would eventually cause hunter-gatherers to consider alternative ways to raise the kind of food they had always simply plucked from the trees and the ground.
       Still, the natural abundance of plants within new settlements precluded any leap into agriculture. For one thing, even if large game was growing scarce, one small animal provided the food value that would have required a full day’s foraging. Hunting not only provided sustenance but protein, vitamins, minerals and fat, which, in combination with fruits, grains and plants, enabled human brains to grow much larger than other mammals’, enabling our ancestors to craft tools to make hunting and farming easier:*  Gathering became less arduous and much faster, fires were maintained throughout the day for cooking and warmth, containers were now used to transport food, storage facilities were constructed and social rules and routines were set for mealtime. 

 

* Spears had been used for thousands of years for hunting, but about 9,000 BC man developed the much more effective bow and arrow.

 

       Nevertheless, a thousand years before agriculture began, breeding livestock had already been in place. Even cave dwellers in North Africa, Turkey and North America tended flocks. Agriculture began in fits and starts, beginning around 12,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (although an excavation in 1999 of a site called Ohalo II [left] on the shores of Galilee found a mix of 150,000  “proto-weeds” and cereals, suggesting domestication and cultivation of cereals dated back 7,000 years earlier.)  
       The Near East began to receive a bounty of vast fields of wild grain as the glaciers retreated 12,000 years ago. Agriculture in Southeast Europe, India and China began around 7,000 BC; in Central Europe around 5,500 and in Northern Europe around 4,000. Maize had been domesticated in Mexico 7,000 years ago. Wild rice was widespread throughout the world, but the species called Oryza sativa (which actually means “sown rice”) that became a basic food for much of mankind, dates back only 5,000 years, first grown along the Yangtze River in China.
       Farming developed much later in tropical zones because digging up plants from soft, warm, moist soil was so much easier than in climates with harder, drier soil, which required digging, arranging and irrigation. Those who did the digging and hoe-ing would soon find out that soil once disturbed becomes more fertile through oxygenation and more receptive to new seeds. It would turn out that one acre of land was capable of producing a hundred times more food than hunter-gatherers.
       The increase in the growing and tending of crops caused more people to move closer together, what is called “sedentism,” which required them more than ever to depend on every member when a sufficient supply of food for everyone was of critical importance. Storage and allocations now needed to be overseen and managed by certain members who earned salaries, perhaps in the form of extra food, that enabled them to become wealthier than others in what had previously been a fairly egalitarian social system. The wise storage of grain (right) could help a population through famine, which was the result of dependence on grown crops––one of the recurring stories in the Bible.
        Tribal leaders came to realize that grain, not wild game, could be taxed, and the more of it produced, the more taxes would fill the tribal coffers for other needs and projects. Accounting for all that data was, as Jared Diamond suggests in Guns, Germs, and Steel, a principal reason why the skill of writing finally appeared about 3,000 BC in Sumer: “Early writing served the needs of those political institutions (such as record keeping and royal propaganda), and the users were full-time bureaucrats nourished by stored food surpluses grown by food-producing peasants.” Hunter-gatherers had never needed such a skill.
       For such reasons, expanded agriculture would begin to have  lasting, often dire, effects on the rest of human history.  The more people a tribe could sustain through efficient management of grain and plant food, the more the tribe could grow in numbers, requiring more food, more grain, more meat and fish to thrive, even to survive on. Land would become valuable, and if it became scarce, the acquisition by force of other tribe’s lands became the only way a people could grow and survive.  In more ancient times tribes had fought over relatively small sections of land within a territory. But by the end of the Neolithic Age, with a world population of 100 million, the stakes were much higher, requiring more than a few warriors as well as strong leaders to subdue, even enslave, other people. And to the victors would go the spoils.  It seemed that gluttony was now an inevitable step in the process of becoming civilized.

 

TO BE CONTINUED. . .

                                NOTES FROM THE WINE CELLAR

 

       For a half century now, Italian wines have been getting better in every one of its 20 wine-growing regions, where they have modernized their viticulture, from Piedmont to Puglia to Sicily. Even the vino della casa at trattorias is now more than dependable and well worth ordering. Which is not to say that Italy does not produce a lot of undistinguished wine in bulk, much of which the world has accepted as pleasant and refreshing, nothing more, which is why there is so much poor-quality Pinot Grigio and Prosecco flooding the market. In addition, some higher-end producers jumped on the idea––not wrongheaded––that people want to drink fruitier, high-alcohol varietals like Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir where such grapes have scant history in Italy.

       Nevertheless, I find that Italian wines, overall, offer better quality at a reasonable price than developing wine regions in the New World can offer. Here are several I’ve enjoyed for just those virtues.

 

 

    Founded in the late 1800s by Carlo Vietti in the Langhe hills of Piedmont, Vietti has been known principally for its superb Barolos and Barbarescos. In the 1950s Luciana Vietti married winemaker and art connoisseur Alfredo Currado, who innovated  the way the wines were made, creating one of the first Barolo crus (1961 Rocche di Castiglione).  In 2016, the winery was acquired by the Krause family, enabling Vietti to extend its properties in the Colli Tortonesi, and others total 185 acres.

       I had no familiarity with Vietti’s  2024 Derthona Timorasso Colli Tortonesi ($43), made from a white grape grown in since antiquity in Piedmont but only recently revived. Derthona is the ancient name of Tortona, just east of Barolo. The wine is made in ceramic tanks fitted with stainless steel couplings and doors that allow for tiny, controlled doses of oxygen into the wine, thereby gently marrying the terroir’s minerality and salinity. According to wine scholar Ian D'Agata, “legend has it that even Leonardo da Vinci liked Temu Rosso wines so much that his gifts at Isabella de Aragona’s wedding were the Monte Borei, an ancient cheese of the area, and a bottle of  ‘Timuràs.’”   Global warming has only helped this thin-skinned varietal, and its flavors are now splendidly concentrated.

 

       I have always loved Barbera, especially Barbera d’Alba and d’Asti, and Vietti’s  2023 Barbera d'Alba Vigna Scarrone ($61) comes from a single cru vineyard in the Barolo area, and there’s no question that it shares a flavor profile with its big sister Barolo. It is aged in barriques and casks for 18 months and unfiltered, giving it extra body, with 15% alcohol, which is high for Barbera. For those who do not wish to pay the high price for Barolo, Barbera d’Alba is a wise choice.

 

 

    While we’re on the subject of Barolo, one of those I’ve enjoyed most recently in from Livia Fontana Fontanin 2018 ($45), which is now maturing into a terrific example. The estate is in Castiglione Falletto’s Bussia area. Famous for its Barolos, they combine young and old vines for their own qualities, both fruity and yet powerful, with good acids and tannins for a long life.

 

Castello Romitorio’s 2018 Brunello di Montalcino ($70) is very much in line with modern thinking about this Tuscan red (which kicked off the “Super Tuscan” hype) that it need not take 20, 30 or 50 years to peak. Brunellos are now made to be drunk sooner, and six years have done nicely by this big, bountiful, well-balanced wine of Sangiovese. It is lighter than some but has plenty of nuance and softened tannins. Its label  (left) is by the great Italian master Sandro Chia.

 

 

Nero d’Avola from Sicily has been growing in popularity for the last five to ten years, and, with its big fruity nature and soft tannins, it’s easy to understand why. Azienda Agricola del Grillo ($40), in Alcamo, is a fine example, based on three generations of experience, as 100% Nero d’Avola, macerated for 12 days and stored for eight months in stainless steel and three in bottle. 

 

 

Visionario Bianco de Alessandro Callici 2025 ($23) is from Tre Venezie, and its IGT status allows the wine maker to blend varietals of his own choosing (unfortunately not named on the back label), but it is a very aromatic northeastern white wine based on an unusual blend of Chardonnay and Gewürztraminer grapes that combine citrus with spice and perfume.

 

 

San Lorenza Ciliegiolo Sassotondo 2021 ($59) comes from Tuscany’s Maremma district, made by Carla Benini (a former economist from Trento) in Pitigliano using 60-year-old Ciliegiolo grapes in volcanic soil. No yeasts are added, and the fermentation takes place in steel tanks with fermentation and maceration lasting 15 to 20 days, followed by 18 to 24 months in Slovenian oak barrels, and then bottled and aged another year in.

 

 

Pillastro Rosso Selezione d’Oro 2023 ($25). Respected wine maker Angelo Maci demonstrates how far Puglia’s viniculture has come at cantina wineries, while still keeping its alcohol sensible, at 13.5% and delivering body and spice from the Primitivo grape from 45-year-old vines with a little Negroamaro added. Cantine Due Palme was founded in 1989 and aims for full-bodied, highly expressive reds. A very good price for a prized Puglian bottling.