The Nutrition and Culinary Culture in the Mysterious Empire of Anatolian Hittites

Abstract

A regular and balanced diet is the most vital rule of a delightful as well as healthy and vigorous long life. Hence, human being has always been in struggle with the living conditions and living things from the moment he is seen on earth. He lived in a hunter and gatherer culture in difficult and tough nature conditions until the Neolithic Age which started at 10000 BC. From the Neolithic, he became the first food producer after settling down by domesticating pigs, goats, sheep and chickens through plants, such as wheat, barley, rye, lentils. Later on, he continued to give life struggle in order to live in better conditions by producing tools and instruments in the rate of his knowledge, talent, experience and technological level. The civilization history was started by the Sumerians in 3200 BC in Mesopotamia by the invention of writing, whilst it was initiated by the Hittites in Anatolia
after the establishment of a powerful kingdom in the mid-17th century BC. The Hittites continued to exist as an empire until 1400 BC and disintegrated into territories in 1200s BC and disappeared in 700 BC. The Hittites initially settled down around the Kızılırmak curve and generally persisted an agriculture-based economical life in western, southern and southeastern Anatolia, and then in the northern regions of Syria, Cyprus and Mesopotamia. Archaeological studies on the Hittites have yielded more than 20000 cuneiform tablets revealing significant information on the mysterious history of the Hittites, and therefore on their agriculture-based economy as well as their culinary culture. In this study, nutrition and the importance of nutrition will be explained at first and afterwards, the nutrition and culinary cultures of the Hittites will be presented.