People say, “You are what you eat.” That’s often true in archaeology. How and what people ate shows how healthy and wealthy they were. It may be revealed by such food-related items as seeds, pollen (plant spores), animal bones, campfires, and cooking tools.
The royal tombs of ancient Egypt were filled with the richest foods available. Egyptians believed that the dead would need food in the afterlife. Egypt had some of the ancient world’s most fertile and productive lands. The tombs show that most Egyptians ate well, and royalty ate very, very well.
But food-related objects aren’t the only clues to past lives. Three other sayings also apply: you are what you wear, you are what you own, and you are what you live in. Look at what you eat, own, wear, and live in. What if you were frozen in time, and archaeologists of the twenty-third century wanted to learn about you? What wrong ideas might they get from studying your “artifacts”?
