Actually, I read somewhere that the first metal ores were found in a potter’s kiln.
I think I remember reading in my chemistry textbook that copper was probably discovered when ancient people noticed it dripping out of some of the rocks that surrounded their fire.
Is this a whoosh? Magnetic stripes on bank cards don’t work by RF - they work by magnetism - in the same way as audio tape and hard drives.
I was reading about the discovery of different artificial sweeteners not long ago. Both saccharine and Nutrasweet were discovered after chemists licked their fingers. :smack: As I recall, LSD was discovered in a similarly nonprofessional setting. I wonder what other common but undiscovered substances I could be tripping on right now?
grabs keys, heads for autoparts store
I can imagine a group of caveman cuddled around a fire while a snowstorm rages outside their cave, they are knawing at some frozen chunks of mammoth meat when one has the idea of putting the meat to the fire to thaw it faster. When the caveman tries it finds out that not only is not frozen, but it smells and tastes a lot better now.
Heh. I always imagined some 7 year old playing with his food near the fire, perhaps first impaling it on a stick and poking the fire with it.
“Og! Stop that! Stop that right now, do you hear me? You’re going to drop your nice mastodon steak and then what will you eat, Mister?”
poke, poke, fall
“Dammit, OG! No more mastodon for you! You fish out that nasty fire-d steak and eat that or go hungry!”
Can you tell I camp with a lot of kids? 
Last night I was watching Bizarre Foods, and he had something on there that just blew my mind. Shark meat. Fermented, rotting, shark meat.
Ok, so apparently hundreds of years ago, a few guys in Iceland were discussing the food shortage problem. There’s all these sharks in the water, but nobody can eat them because they are toxic. The poison apparently causes bloody diarrhea, which could lead to death. But our guys are determined, damnit. They try cooking…but people still have the bloody runs. Not good. So, the next logical step after cooking is fermentation.
What?
How does that even follow?! “It’s poison when it’s fresh. Let’s leave it out for six months and try again! Oh, the horrible, horrible smell is a sign that it’s tasty!” Did they get the village idiot to try it?
Trial and error
One of my favorite comics is Arsenic Lullaby. A recurring feature in Arsenic Lullaby is a secret agent who works for the Department Of Things Not Yet Tried. You see, the government has discovered that so many great discoveries were accidents. They reason that there are more great discoveries waiting. So they have an agency to try unusual things on the off chance they will lead to great discoveries.
That makes a measure of sense. Who looked at his buddy and said, “Hey, check out that funny looking critter taking a dump over there. Howsabout we roast the poop, grind it up, and mix it with hot water?” “Mmm! I bet that will be some tasty shit!” :dubious:
Your frame of reference being what, exactly?
Sorry, I swore to never, ever, reveals any details about that.
Nodnod. Wise man.
Actually, the best coffee I’ve ever had began just that way. Are you familiar with Kopi Luwak coffee?
Deviating from food here, what about the guys who invented seriously dangerous stuff, like combustion engines? Who in the world could have thought that BLOWING SOMETHING UP is a good, perfectly safe way to turn a motor?
When I first saw this thread this was my contribution. I’ve had olives from the tree. To think you could find them edible in any form was thinking waaaay outside of the box.
My guess is that EM (early man) was walking through a wild fire area and found dead, burnt animals and thought , “Hey, this is not bad!”.
Then you m ust be a baking Og. Even with directions I don’t do bread. To think that someone concieved it before it happened boggles the mind.
Well, capsaicin is really quite addictive, as anyone who’s watched their tolerance rapidly shoot upward knows. Heroin was a piece of cake to kick (for me), but I’ll never kick capsaicin. And I’ve been told by my doctor that I’ll have to when I get to my 60s, or my digestive system will really pay for it (some thing or another that apparently runs in the family). That will be a really, really tough time for me, I know it already. I slather almost everything I eat in jalapeno sauce if I don’t actually cover it in jalapenos, and I’ve been known to use Blair’s Sudden Death Sauce to spice up salsas, soups, ramen, etc. Those rare meals which don’t involve those three options generally have some other hot sauce on them, like Thai peanut sauce, Sriracha, etc. I can sort of see how chiles would have looked like nutritious food, and once people started trying them, they got hooked.
What I wonder is, how did the ancients ever figure out that salvia was at all useful? Even with our modern 5x-, 10x- and 15x-strength enhanced salvia, smoking it these days is more often an abject lesson in patience than it is a mind blowing psychedelic experience (although it can really blow minds when you do get there). (Don’t freak out, mods, salvia is legal on a federal level.) Furthermore, it’s so much more likely to produce a bad trip than any of the litany of psychedelic mushrooms plus cannabis, ergot, morning glory, etc. I kind of wonder how long it took to finally figure out that it had some worth to it.
I mean, the first person who smoked cannabis felt something, I’m sure. The first person to have datura tea knew they had a potent psychotropic on their hands. The first person who chewed on a coca leaf knew what he was dealing with . But how many tries did it take to figure out salvia? I wonder at it to this day.
More like trial and instant death? 
:eek:
When I saw the guy opening his mouth and raise the elephant dung I closed the tab so quickly that he mouse left burning skid marks on the pad a la Back to the Future.
Honey. You have to go through a cloud of bees to get it, AIUI. Who would do that without knowing in advance that what you were going to get out of it was going to taste awfully good?
Mushrooms. So many of them are dangerous, and so many of the dangerous ones and the safe ones look alike.
Milk. “That calf is drinking its mother’s milk- maybe we should try that”???
Grafting a part of one plant onto a totally different plant. Why would anyone think this would work?
Having been made by my mom to eat burned fish because I set the oven to the wrong temperature, I can totally see this happening.
:dubious: You’re postulating that some humans would have been unfamiliar with the idea of milk? Really?
I’d think that would’ve been just about the easiest leap of logic of them all: Hey, my goat has those same things that Mom has! I really liked those!