Cheese is a product of bacteria, and next to the few new domesticated
species, the most important new foods invented by the earliest
civilizations are the product of things going bad—or, rather, being
colonized by benign bacteria. By controlling the conditions under
which the good bacteria proliferate, civilized humans invented a
whole series of new foods, including bread, wine and beer, cheese,
and pickled or cured vegetables and fruits.
The ability to store large quantities of food has an important effect:
You don’t have to eat everything you can and move on, as hunters
and gatherers did. All these things can be kept from season to season
and stored long term in case of crop failure, drought, or invasion.
Although they may have a less varied diet, it’s a more regular and
predictable diet.
Another consequence of food storage is that much more land
is going to have to be altered to grow crops. Even in the best
of situations, the same crops grown over and over caused soil
depletion, prompting people to move elsewhere—usually to invade
their neighbors.
Fats—especially olive oil and nut oils—are an important class of
foods that altered society. Not only do these provide a storable
source of extra calories, but also a new cooking medium: frying
and sautéing.
Wild fowl were eaten for millennia, but domesticating chickens
as well as ducks and geese is very important. This led to a ready
supply of eggs at a relatively small cost, and you could eat the fowl
when it was done producing eggs.
Fish remained primarily caught wild until modern times, but
shellfi sh farming hasn’t changed much since ancient times. It’s not
exactly domestication, but it is a very effi cient way of farming.