Refrigeration is a pretty new phenomenon, so for millennia, people had to find clever ways to preserve food. These practices slowed the growth of microorganisms that could cause foodborne illnesses or lead food to rot. Many preservation practices other than refrigeration — like salting, drying, smoking, pickling and fermenting — have been used for a long time.
These methods aside, how did ancient people store their leftovers?
It turns out that early hunter-gatherers had some pretty creative ways to extend the “shelf life” of their larder.
One fall morning in 2015, two farmers in Michigan made an unexpected discovery: a pelvis bone from a mammoth. After a few phone calls and an excavation, a research team uncovered additional paleontological and archaeological evidence that brought the scene into greater clarity. More than 11,000 years ago, mammoth herds roamed North America. For hunter-gatherers, bringing down an animal the size of an African elephant would be like winning the lottery — a prize you don’t want to lose. So, some Indigenous people put their mammoth leftovers into ponds to keep it for later use.
