nourishment

Drinking tea, why did people do that is the first question. Tea can be used as a medicine or as an intoxicating means. Besides that it serves as a ceremony. "Herbal tea" actually does not exist...

The uttermost importance in those days was that the small groups could hardly rely upon others in bad times: a failed harvest for example was a huge disaster...

The Romans didn’t use soap: they cleaned themselves with olive oil and some sand to remove dead skin cells. Soap supposedly is a Gallic or Germanic invention...

Surely there was a set division of tasks between men and women, more traditional then nowadays. Probably, inside the house, the women were in charge, men outside. Contrasts were important; air - earth, inside - outside, north - south...

People in prehistory did not get very old, meaning one had to grow up much earlier. There was less time to remain a child than nowadays. Besides this, life was very hard...

We cannot say for sure. We presume cooking from the Neolithic on when they started to use ceramic vessels – they prepared various gruels or soups, but it was possible...

The composition of grown plants differs both regionally and temporarily and is dependent on the climate, local conditions, fertility of soil and so on...

Baking plates are known from the Cerny- und Chassey-cultures, the Bourgogne middle-Neolithic and the Michelsberg-culture, ca. 4500-3500 BC). Their use seem to stop abruptly around 3500 BC caused by another way of baking bread. Maybe from this time onward, people used to bake directly on hot ashes, hot stones, pots or the inner walls of furnaces...

For sure no potatoes or tomatoes, these originate in America. Food was only seasonally available: bread and porridge was always available where there was cereal - by the end of the Winter, people often suffered from hunger...

The main foodstuff for the early medieval person was grain. It was cooked as a whole grain or ground down and used for porridge or bread. Meat, fish, vegetables, peas, beans and lentils were used in stews and soups which were seasoned with salt and herbs...