A History of Greek Cuisine

A history of Greek cuisine, nominally. Yes, it’s about food, but that’s merely a vector by which to cover half a million years of human activity in the eastern Mediterranean.

An absolutely top-notch Greek production in both Greek and English (with subs for each when necessary) with people on the level of Colin Renfrew, along with bioanthropologists and a host of other experts, whose work is well-explained, who figure out, essentially by going through old trash, what we ate, and thus much of what our societies were once like.

I watched the first two and spot-checked the rest: fan-freakin’-tastic. Extremely well filmed, too, without the endlessly annoying hyper-cutting, Unbelievably Portentous Music, braindead down-dumbing, and vat of anti-intellectual treacle you get from your average American history documentary nowadays. This, even with historical reconstructions (always motivated) and serious CGI (eg, city reconstructions) at times, is completely spot on, tasteful, and entirely b.s.-free. The drone-camera operator is particularly good: the shots flow like a crane or even steadicam shot. Beautifully done.

The five videos break down like this:

1) prehistory up to the Minoans; 

2) archaic, classical, and Alexandrine Greece, including early Roman times after the conquest; 

3) Byzantium; 

4) The Ottomans up through the Greek Revolution and the 20thC

5) Modern Greece: late 20th, early 21stC