The history of the spoon is a wild and varied one, let us start before the beginning..
PREHISTORIC SPOONS
In the caveman days nobody used spoons because they didn't have anything to eat with spoons, just leg of Wildebeest, and if they wanted to drink some water, they just stuck their head in the nearest lake.
It wasn't until after the invention of FIRE that someone invented STEW by putting vegetables, water and bits of leftover meat into a stone bowl and heating it up a bit. The cavemen thought that this was yummy but was yummier when it was hot, but it burnt their fingers, so one of them got a bit of bark and used it to eat the stew. This was the first spoon, after a while they figured out that a curved bit of bark from a branch could hold more stew and this sufficed for many years until the invention of :
SOUP
Soup was invented by a tribe of people who had travelled north to Scandinavia. When they first settled their they started making stew, but because it was winter they had few vegetables and even less meat, so one of the more imaginative tribespeople suggested using some of this white stuff that was lying about, so they put lots of snow in the stew and as we all know, snow is really just water, and as we also know, soup is just stew with more water and less meat and vegetables and so SOUP was invented. But when they tribe tried eating it with their curved bark then it spilt everywhere and they were distraught so they prayed to the gods and half an hour later someone found a bit of wood from a tree that had been splintered by lightning, this bit of wood had been attached to a branch and had a depression in it which was ideal for holding a small amount of soup, and the people wee joyous and they all carved these bits of wood and ate soup.
The Bronze Age
these primitive spoons spread throughout the world and many years later when people figured out how to cast metal the first things they made were not axes but spoons that wouldn't leave splinters in your mouth and so the modern spoon was born.
MODERN SPOONS
The basic design of spoons has not changed since the bronze age except for the materials used, today steel and plastic are the most common. Although in the same way that all dogs come from wolves, spoons have diversified into many different "breeds", such as the tea spoon the dessert spoon, the wooden spoon, the soup spoon, the ladle, the ice cream scoop, the sieve, and even the exotic Arabian throwing spoon. the most famous spoon of all time is probably the George Washington spoon , which was used by the USA's first president to cross the Delaware because he didn't have any oars. It is now housed in the Smithsonian institute
Spoonish Things
MR SPOON: Popular character from children's TV program button moon, he had wooden spoons for arms and legs, a dashing hat and a space rocket made from a washing up liquid bottle, it took off whenever he pressed the ROUND GREEN BUTTON, he had a greenhouse and made regular trip to button moon,which was a large button.
SPOON MAN: Track from the album Super Unknown by Sound Garden (probably most famous for Black Hole sun, from the same album) lead singer Chris Novaselik once said "Pass me a spoon please"
SPOON HEADS: Nick name for the Cardassians from Star Trek (DS9 in particular) given to them by the Bajoran people because of the spoon like things on their foreheads
Mr Spooner: Lecturer at Oxford or Cambridge who was famous for his "Spoonerisms"because he kept getting words mixed up like
"lets salute our queer dean"
"you have hissed all my mystery lessons and tasted the whole worm"
Sunday, 12 October 2008
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