ABSTRACT

Ever since the prehistoric hunting-and-gathering era, humans have valued fowl, amphibians, and their eggs as food. In some cultures, eggshells have also served as containers. Evidence of the early use of eggs comes from Patne, India, where artisans engraved ostrich eggs around 38,000 BCE. The Maya and the Caribe traditionally collected bird and turtle eggs from tree, ground, and seaside crannies and extracted fish roe from the catches in their seines. The Haida of the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, gathered eggs for storage in cedar-bark bags and relied on shore birds as a food source. The Eskimo enjoyed a dish called “duck not yet,” made by boiling ducklings in the shell shortly before they hatched. The Philippine balut, sold by street vendors, parallels the Aleut dish with a duck egg boiled on the seventeenth day after fertilization until the liquid forms a sauce that marinates the unborn bird.