Many human innovations seem to me to necessarily have been the product of sheer lunacy. For example, I have several times read versions of the following:
But the obvious question is, why the hell would they try that in the first place? Was it some bored high school students hanging out amidst the corpses one day, and one says, “Dude, I heard you can totally get high by snorting the scabs off of one of these stiffs.” His buddies: “Let’s totally try it!” They later notice they are all immune to smallpox. Probably not, but who the hell thought this would ever be a good idea (even though it did turn out to be a good idea)?
What innovation has made you say, “What the hell made them try THAT?”
And if you have an explanation for why any of these were tried, please satisfy our curiosity.
Coffee. The whole process of making a beverage out of coffee is utterly counterintuitive.
“Right, so there are these little berries, OK?”
“Are we gonna eat the berries?” “Not exactly. We’re going to just take the little seeds inside and…”
“Are we gonna eat the seeds?” “Not exactly. We’re going to let them spoil, ferment for a few days, then…”
“Are we gonna eat the fermented seeds?” “Not exactly. We’re going to take the fermented seeds and roast them until they’re charred and bitter.”
“Are we gonna eat the charred, fermented seeds?” “Not exactly. We’re going to grind them up and boil them into a drink.”
Oysters, the first guy that looked at an oyster and thought “Yum!” is a puzzle.
I know that the real answer is probably something like “hey, other animals are sucking this chewy mucus looking stuff out, looks edible and food’s hard to come by…mucus doesn’t even put up a fight” but dayum.
I so picture a coupla drunk-assed cavemen on the beach going “Dude, I’ll give you five bucks if you eat that thing.”
Vanilla beans require so much preparation before they even taste like “Vanilla” that I wonder how anyone discovered them.
“Dude, I was, like, alternating between massaging that beanpod and drying it in the sun every day for, like, a month and woah, it really tastes good after you squeeze out the oil and combine it with chiles and cacao in a hot frothy drink.”
Hey, this isn’t edible. Maybe if we took the seeds out, ground them into a powder, mixed that up with water and yeast, let it sit aound until it doubles in size, then heat it up, we’d really have something here. Or we could just eat those berries.
Heh. You give us too much credit. Yeast wasn’t identified and isolated until the 16th Century. We enjoyed bread (and wine and beer) in blissful ignorance for at least 5000 years before then, thanks to the wonder of “leaving stuff lying around until microbes land on it.”
A funny thing happened a few months ago. I bought an orange, let it sit around for a long time. (Not really on purpose, I just didn’t want it.) One morning I decided it looked really good, and decided to eat it. Oh my! Not wanting to get bagged that early in the morning, I ended up throwing it out. What I should have done is saved the juice for an afternoon cocktail.
I just wonder who it was that thought “You know, I think I’ll stick that piece of metal through my ear. I bet that would look good.” I imagine though that the invention of piercings came shortly after the discovery of alcohol.
I’m sure I could look this up in five minutes on the internet, but I kind of prefer the sense of wonderment. Who thought that gnawing on tree sap–but not eating it–would be a good time? (OK, I just looked it up. Wonderment is overrated.) “Hey, look at that stuff oozing out of the tree! Coincidentally, I’ve been worried about my biting strength. That’ll give the ol’ jaw a workout!”
One I forgot–doctors “discovered” years ago (before blood glucose tests) that the urine of diabetics was sweet. What exactly was going on in that exam room? :dubious:
Pre-puberty, I always used to wonder how kissing got invented.
“Hey, you know, I really like you. I was thinking, it might be kind of fun if I rubbed my lips on yours for a while, and then maybe put my tongue in your mouth and wiggled it around for a bit.”
“That sounds kind of gross…but I’m really getting bored with parcheesi. Why don’t you go invent the toothbrush first and then maybe we’ll give it a try.”
Exactly what you think. There’s even a carving on a section of Rouen Cathedral that has satirical images of various professions, this one depicting a doctor taking a sip.
Anyway, what I always wondered is how they figured out which parts of the fugu pufferfish were edible.
