North American Indian medicine men and shamans have played a large role in the the older literature on North America. The nineteenth century saw the first anthropology description of American medicine men and shamans.

By definitions, all shamans would be medicine man but to all medicine men would be shamans.

Shamanism means traditions of prehistoric origin that are characteristic of Mongoloid peoples, including the American Indians.

They believed and acknowledge one supreme, all powerful, and intelligent Being, or Giver of Life, who create and governs all things.

The Shaman functionary in the chief place in all religious and ceremonial activities, thus making shamanism synonymous with religion.

It is the shaman rather than the priest who is called upon to treat the sick, to foretell the future.

Medicine power is often attributed to a fetish or charm adopted to typify a tutelary demon, or mystery guardian and the superior performance of one “juggler” over another is often attributed to the fact his medicine is the stronger.

Medicine is also associated with magic numbers. The usual sacred number among Indian is four, signifying the cardinal directions, but sometimes six, adding the up and down directions.

The Medicine bundle was perhaps the most important. In the thirties the medicine bundle cult still survive among the Potawatomis along with the more recent religion or drum dance, and peyote religion, as one of the three curing cults still extant.

The medicine bundle was usually made of an animal skin as deer tails, dried fingers, and often the maw stone of a buffalo.

Characteristically, the shaman is a healer, a psychopomp (who guides the souls of the dead to their home in the afterlife), and more generally a mediator between her or his community and the world of spirits (most often animal sprits and the spirits of the forces of nature).
American Indian Shaman

History of Cooking
Cooking is the oldest of the arts. It is of all arts that which has most signally advanced the cause of civilization; for the need of cooking taught is the application of fire and by means of fire man became lord over nature.

One theory is that an out of control fire burned down a hut and accidently cooked some pigs. People wandered in, tried the cooked meat and liked it.

Another theory is that a forest fire first roasted meat; still others think that cooking was a more deliberate, controlled act by humans. In any case, now there were more options than raw bar and tartare.

It was cooking but how about cuisine? Cuisine can be defined a self conscious tradition of cooking and eating, with a set of attitude about food and its place in the life of man.

So cuisine requires not just a style of cooking but an awareness about how the food is prepared and consumed.

It must also a wide variety of ingredients, more than are locally available and cooks and diners willing to experiments which means they are not constricted by tradition.

In modern times, humans are the only animals that cook food, but archeological evidence indicates that this was not always the case.

In the past, other, now instinct species that were related to modern Homo sapiens, such as Neanderthals, also cooked food.

Indeed, cooking almost certainly existed 2500,000 years ago, and it may have existed 1.5 millions years ago, well before the emergence of Homo sapiens as a species.

Roasting over an open fire probably the first cooking method. Pit roasting – putting food in a pit with burning embers and covering it - might have come next.

Then spit roasting, when hunters came home with the animal already on a spear and decided to cook it by hanging it over the fire and turning it.

With sharp tools, meat could be cut into smaller pieces to make it cook faster. Food could be boiled large mollusk or turtle shells where they were available, or even in animal skins, but pots were not invented until around 10,000 BC and there were no sturdy clay boiling pits until about 5000 BC.

The invention of pottery cookware that was both waterproof and heatproof, allowing food to be easily boiled and stewed. Food was eventually enclosed in ovens; the earliest ovens discovered so far have been found in Egypt and date to about 3000 BC.

The first references to frying date from about 600 BC.
History of Cooking

The Meaning of Anthropology
Anthropology is a science of humanity and its society. It is a scientific study of humanity, the similarities and diversity of cultures, and attempts to present an integrated picture of humankind.

Anthropology studies the biological, social and cultural development of humankind and seeks answers to why people are different and how they are similar. It has subdivisions linked by unifying themes. one can glean the vastness of the subject matter of anthropology by looking into its serious fields such as the following:

1. Biological or physical anthropology
2. Archeology
3. Cultural anthropology
4. Linguistics
5. Applied Anthropology

Biological or physical anthropology
This studies the evolution of man and biological variations or diversity within the species. Biological anthropologists are concerned with how biological changes occur and how all these are related to the natural and social environments of the subjects.

The study the biological processes of humans and their primate relatives in their natural and social environments.

A knowledge of human variation is important in understanding human adaptation.

Archeology
Archeology studies and reconstructs events of the past since the beginning of the culture through such cultural remains as tools, buildings and pot shards (broken pieces of pottery.)

The focus is on the discovery of people and looking into how cultures change occurs. Archeologists do this by excavating sites.
The Meaning of Anthropology