440 festivals: further reading See also adornment; agriculture; architecture; art; calendars and clocks; children; climate and geography; clothing and footwear; death and burial practices; drama and theater; empires and dynasties; food and diet; gender structures and roles; hunting, fishing, and gathering; military; music and musical instruments; natural disasters; nomadic and pastoral societies; religion and cosmology; resistance and dissent; sacred sites; social organization; sports and recreation; towns and villages further reading China Internet Information Center “Traditional Chinese Festivals.” Available online URL: http://www.china.org.cn/english/features/Festivals/78131.htm Downloaded on June 16, 2007 Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony (New York: George Braziller, 2003) Daniel Diehl and Mark Donnelly, Medieval Celebrations (Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2001) Dale F Eickelman, Moroccan Islam: Tradition and Society in a Pilgrimage Center (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976) Ignác Goldziher, “Veneration of Saints in Islam.” In Muslim Studies, vols ed S M Stern, trans C.R Barber and S.M Stern (Chicago: Aldine, 1967–71) Gustave E von Grunebaum, Muhammadan Festivals (London: Curzon Press, 1976) ▶ food and diet introduction The food and diet of medieval peoples can be viewed as the fuel for the rise of empires It can also be seen as the stuff that most concerned ordinary people during their lives Happiness and unhappiness often depended more on the availability of food than on religion, good governments, and victory in war Indeed, starving a population was a tactic of war, and any government that neglected the dietary needs of its people risked violent termination The earliest foodstuffs were wild plants and wild animals, and the earliest humans were almost certainly huntergatherers Hunter-gatherers figured out what was good to eat and what was not good to eat, and there is no telling how many possibly starving people tried poisonous foods, discovering for their survivors which mushrooms or fruits would kill them There were many hunter-gatherer societies during the medieval era, and to many of the people of agricultural societies, these hunter-gatherers seemed to be wandering the landscape, occasionally happening upon something to eat In fact, hunter-gatherers, whether in central Africa, Argentina’s grasslands, or the middle of Australia, were people who rarely set out not knowing where they were going or what they were looking for With the exception of islands in the Pacific, they had lived for thousands of years on their lands and knew what there was to eat at different times of the year and where to find it Far from just wandering, they went to where they were likeliest to find food The vast majority of people lived in agricultural societies, mostly because agriculture allowed for larger populations than did hunting and gathering Agriculturalists were limited in where they lived by the suitability of land for growing crops or grazing domesticated animals Thus, places like the North American Arctic remained exclusively the realm of hunter-gatherers Although agriculture had many advantages, particularly the advantage of being able to provide enough food to store for hard times, its limitations could result in malnourished populations For instance, millet is not as nourishing as rice or wheat; it was thus possible in places such as northern China for people to eat millet and still suffer from nutritional diseases The medieval Chinese went far to fix the problem by importing a strain of wheat that could grow in the northern Chinese climate Other peoples did not have such options For example, in New Guinea, people mixed the growing of gardens with hunting and gathering, because their domesticated plants could not provide them with the amount of protein they needed Lacking large domesticated food animals, they could supplement their diet with meat only from spiders, insects, rats, and other small animals Meat in much of the medieval world was a luxury that the rich ate regularly and the poor ate only on special occasions This resulted in one of the most interesting disparities among medieval people The Khoi of the plains of southern Africa, who herded cattle but raised no crops of their own, instead gathering wild plants or trading with east coast cities for grains and fruits, may have had a richer, perhaps healthier diet than the common people in great cities in Europe, the Near East, and China Dietary laws also affected what people ate Human beings not eat just what nature or common sense would seem to demand, because they develop preferences, social customs, and religious restrictions that affect what they choose to eat and when they eat it It is worth considering that many people would violate their preferences or social rules to avoid starving Indeed, some anthropologists believe cannibalism was a response to diets deficient in protein In some cases, people seemed willing to starve rather than eat a proscribed food such as pork or vermin such as mice Many a war began over food In some cases, entire cultures depended for food on raiding other people, as happened with nomadic northern Asian tribes attacking China and the cities of the Silk Road, or in North Africa, where nomads attacked farming communities, stealing their food or exacting