food and diet: Europe far west as Gansu, as far east as Shandong, and as far north as Inner Mongolia Hunting and gathering, particularly for meat such as deer, continued to be important, though domesticated animals, such as pigs, chickens, and dogs, were also common Horses did not become common after the third millennium b.c.e and, then, like buffalo, were used for transportation as well as food By 7000 b.c.e the spread of sedentary living, pottery making, plant cultivation, and animal husbandry had clearly spread from the river valleys of China north to the lower and middle Amur River basin in the Russian Far East, and eventually through Korea to Japan in about 1000 b.c.e They had also spread southward through southern China into Southeast Asia and island Southeast Asia, perhaps through Taiwan around 5000 b.c.e and the Philippines and Indonesia by 3000 b.c.e Eventually, these practices reached the Lapita cultures of western Polynesia (1500 b.c.e.) and Polynesia to the southeast and the Ban Kao Neolithic peoples to the southwest in Thailand By 2000 b.c.e they had moved westward into the Late Harappan and related Indus Valley farming cultures in south Asia Each society had its own cultural characteristics and dietary habits This is clearly evident not only in the localized food groups, limited by the local environment, growing conditions, and habit, but also in the pottery assemblages, which reveal diversity in food preparation and serving The greatest evidence for elaborate food preparation and service is found in late Neolithic tombs in China Food was processed using mortars, pestles, and rollers and then steamed, simmered, boiled, and roasted in a variety of highfooted vessels that stood over fire pits or placed on clay stoves Food and beverages were stored in a variety of large and small jars They could be served with ladles or poured The elite in some areas ate off high-stemmed platters and drank out of delicately manufactured high-stemmed cups Less prestigious ware, such as short cups with or without handles, were also used By 2400 b.c.e early peoples were making alcoholic beverages of rice and fruit By this time food preparation and service, particularly in feasting environments—probably having to with mortuary ritual and rituals involving change in the social hierarchy—had become quiet complex, as indicated by the increasingly elaborate decorations and manufacturing methods of the pottery and the range of service vessel types By the end of the second millennium b.c.e elite peoples controlled the large-scale production and use of ritual implements used during banquets that increasingly used bronze and jade as well as other materials Outside the Indus Valley and northern China this level of civilization or social complexity is not evident in the AsiaPacific area until much later In northern Thailand the site of Ban Chiang (2100–900 b.c.e., contemporary with the Shang and Zhou historical periods in China) reveals a sophisticated use of technology, including the production of metal vessels The ancient Thai ate rice, taro, yams, and mangrove embryos, along with hunted animals and fish They sweetened their foods with bananas, palm sugars, and honey Likewise, to the 477 northeast, the increasingly sophisticated Korean culture of the Mumun Period (1500–300 b.c.e.) produced cooking and service vessels for a diet consisting mostly of fish and millet or wheat (with soy and adzuki beans, beefsteak plants, and other vegetables), but it was not until around the eighth century b.c.e that high-status remains with metal vessels are found In Japan metal artifacts are not evident until the fourth century b.c.e., when the Yayoi rice farmers came over from the mainland and replaced the Jōmon culture A combination of hunting and gathering and some cultivation of trees and roots continued in the islands In Lapita cultural complexes in the Pacific islands at this time, archeologists have found cooking ovens, storage pits for foods, vegetable scrapers, and evidence for the use of domesticated pigs, dogs, and chickens EUROPE BY J ACQUI WOOD Our understanding of prehistoric food and drink in Europe comes from a variety of sources From the Stone Age (10,000 years ago) to the Bronze Age (3,500 years ago) information is found in archaeological data gleaned from pollen analysis Such analysis relies on soil samples taken from excavated areas of an archaeological dig and studied to discover the sorts of plants that were growing in the local environment at the time of occupation of particular sites Sometimes, too, the charred remains of ceramic pots leave more direct evidence of what people ate Charring preserves the remains so that archaeologists can determine the ingredients of the last meal cooked in the pot Cooking fires in dwellings also can give us information as to specific types of cooking techniques used by the occupants, such as the remains of clay baking Clay baking was a method employed to cook meat and fish slowly The meat or fish was wrapped in grass and then smeared with silty river clay and placed at the edge of an open fire to gently cook in its clay casing When the meat or fish was ready to eat, its casing would crack as the steam from the cooked food tried to escape The discarded remains of this baking process are found at numerous prehistoric sites At a site called Trethellan in Cornwall, England, dating to 3,500 years ago, a fire pit was full of these clay fragments At this site bird bone impressions were found in the clay fragments, indicating the type of meat that had been cooked in it Much earlier, approximately 10,000 years ago, the hunter-gatherer diet consisted of lots of meat and fish, supplemented by nuts and berries collected in the autumn This diet was nutritious and quite adequate for thousands of years, because high-protein diets such as this would satisfy hunger for longer than a cereal-based or vegetable-based diet The seasonal aspect of food was very important too Eggs, for instance, would have been taken from any bird and eaten only in the springtime In the New Stone Age or Neolithic Period, 6,000 years ago, communities started to settle along the coastlines, owing to the abundance of wild food available