Hot pot might be older than we think

According to Thrillist, the apocryphal origin story of hot pot is that it was a dish eaten on-the-go in the helmets of Mongolian soldiers, who introduced the concept to the Chinese. Most of us know the hot pot experience from restaurants where pots of steaming broth are served with various meats and vegetables to place in the broth, cooking it a la minute. But the idea for hot pot might go back a lot farther than bands of nomadic Mongolians. As Atlas Obscura explains, ancient man might have used hot springs as nature’s own hot pots.

An interdisciplinary team of archaeologists, geologists, and geochemists studying Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge speculate that the now dusty gorge was once similar to Yellowstone National Park located in northwestern Wyoming. Yellowstone has numerous hot springs, some of which have water temperatures that exceed the boiling point. These springs are home to thermophiles – heat loving microorganisms that only exist in very narrow temperature ranges – and the team at Olduvai Gorge has found evidence of a specific thermophile in the rock strata they have excavated.

Knowing that humans and other hominids frequented the gorge, the scientists immediately thought about how the hot springs might have been used to cook food. Ainara Sistiaga, a geoarchaeologist and geochemist at the University of Copenhagen, says that a recently-published paper on the topic “opens a window to stop focusing on there being fire or there not being fire, to say there are other ways to cook and we should be looking for them.”

Photo of Steak-and-shrimp hot pot from Food & Wine Magazine