How to search about History of Food

[Athenaeus]

Let's say that you are searcing about Beer in antiquity.

1.Resist to the impulse to type the word beer to one search engine machine , especially of you are not a historian.
Why?
Because you will have 1.000.000 of available pages and you won't be able to judge which one contains accurate information.
What do to instead?

Try to have in the Favorites of your browser some Encyclopedic Dictionnaries for children. YES! You heard well. For children

If you type the word beer in antiquity in the search box of one of those sites you will get within two lines the info that probably Egyptian were the first to invent beer.
Aha! You have a clue to proceed now
You have Beer and ancient Egyptians.

Go back to you beloved Google.

Type Ancient Egyptian Food and Beverages.

2 million replies...

Don't be depressed.

Try to see whick one of the proposed sites, contain in their URL the tiny world EDU or ORG
Start from those sites. They propably belong to a university but this doesn't mean that they contain accurate information.

To be sure that you are visiting a serious site go to the end of it and search to see if they are any bibliographic referencies.
I mean which books the author of the site used to compose his texts.
If they aren't other sites... better forget about this one unless you want to read about mummies with destroyed teeth.

If you are comfortable with long texts I would suggest to try immediately Britannica.com .

Britannica is not free anymore but at least the chapter that they propose youthebest site for the topic you search is still free.

Other links
Fathom.com For more detailed searches
Myriam Webster on line and look again forthe sites that they proposeIf you are interested on what other people discussing inother forums you can go to Yahoo and in the search box type
"about ancient Beer"

Surprisingly Yahoo contains many interesting sites.

And if you think that you want to dive in deep waters just try for once the TLG free trial.
Go to the main page and type the world beer, zuthos in ancient Greek, then you will have what every ancient Greek or Latin author has written about beer... But you have to know how to read Latin or Ancient Greek
It doesn't matter if you don't know. Just try it for once it has fun

It was long but good research need time and Love.

If you need anything else on that just drop me a line using the PM system.
Thanks

Athenaeus

[Pete]

Good advice Athenaeus, but don't forget to mention to pick up a book. Yes, books! Though I have learned much through the internet (and am learning more everyday) much of what I learned came from books. And I feel that books are still the greatest vessel for information.

[mudbug]

LOL! Pete, there's no way you could've known this without reading it but already mentioned this in a thread that inspired this post.

In Internet , you can find some sites dedicated to the History of Food. BUT many of them just copy each other!!! Very few have information that is based on books. Let's face it guys. Knowledge is hiding in books still . Internet hasn't succeded yet to accumulate the trueknwoledge and this is because none can quarantee the copy right of the ideas but this is another question.

– Athenaeus


From: Do we need a Forum on History of Food and Cooking?

[poireau]

Athenaues.

Besides the Ales of the Trappist Monks, I am not a big consumer of beer. I have read what you posted about food history. Count me in. I have spent the last 25 years on this pattern of study.