Dinner with King Tut Quotes

“Artifacts are physical proof of what people in ancient times achieved, achievements that the past few centuries of colonization and other upheavals cannot erase. But artifacts sitting on a shelf, behind glass, can take us only so far into the minds of other people. To reach them on that deeper level, we need to inhabit their world—to endure their frustrations and revel in their joys, to touch and smell and taste everything they took for granted, so we no longer will. We need to feel the fabric of their lives. And experimental archaeology—living archaeology—can do that in a way that no other field can.”
― Sam Kean, Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations

“Çatalhöyük in central Turkey, arguably the first true city in history. Çatalhöyük (“cha-tahl-HEW-ook,” meaning “forked mound”) was founded around 7500 BC. Because people there built new homes on top of old ones, a mound 70 feet high eventually rose, with more than a dozen occupational layers spread over 34 acres. Most people around the world then would never have seen more than a few hundred individuals in one place their entire lives. Çatalhöyük boasted of up to eight thousand.”
― Sam Kean, Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations

“There’s indirect evidence that humans have been using poison arrows for tens of thousands of years: archaeologists have found arrows in Africa so slender that, unless they were used to hunt butterflies or something, they simply would not have been effective without poison.”
― Sam Kean, Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations

“She didn’t catch the shark for meat; shark flesh requires bleeding and soaking or it tastes of ammonia. She caught the shark because it stores drinkable fluids in its brain.”
― Sam Kean, Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations

“For unknown reasons, repeated exposure to cold water spurs the growth of bony knobs in the ear canal, blocking it off and blocking out sound. Archaeologists have found several skulls with narrowed ear canals from the first quasi-sedentary coastal divers in Peru.”
― Sam Kean, Dinner with King Tut: How Rogue Archaeologists Are Re-creating the Sights, Sounds, Smells, and Tastes of Lost Civilizations