This 8,000-Year-Old Soup Contained A Meat You Can't Eat In The US

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Humans have been making and eating soup for a very long time. Archaeologists have found evidence of tools that likely were used for soup as far back as 20,000 B.C. It's certainly an excellent way to prepare foods into a meal; boil what you've got in some hot water and enjoy the comforting, nourishing dish. One ingredient that some had access to 8,000 years ago in Mesopotamia was hippopotamus. Archaeologists unearthed evidence of hippo soup in this area that today encompasses areas of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran dating back to 6,000 B.C. It's believed that sparrow meat, vegetables, lentils, herbs, and spices were also part of the recipe.

Regarding how this soup might have tasted, author Peter Hathaway Capstick once wrote, "It is my personal opinion that hippo meat is one of the finest of game foods ... the taste is mild, less than lamb and more than beef, slightly more marbled than usual venison. It tastes exactly like, well, hippo," via Meridian Star. In 1910, the New York Times described hippopotamus as "lake cow bacon," according to K2 Radio. But don't let your curiosity get you too excited to try hippo meat; because it is considered a type of bushmeat, it is banned in the United States. The animal is still used for food in their native West Africa, but indulging in these large water animals imposes plenty of risk; many people there have died or gotten very sick after eating infected hippo meat.

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At the turn of the 20th century, the United States was going through a meat crisis; in a nutshell, there wasn't enough cattle, pigs, bison, or chickens to feed America's growing demand for meat. At the same time, the state of Louisiana was fighting a losing battle with water hyacinths, which were gifted to the state by Japan in 1884. It turned out that the plants were invasive and killing a lot of native fish. Two men, Frederick Russell Burnham and Robert Broussard, joined forces to introduce what was known as "The Hippo Bill" in 1910, which essentially proposed to import the animals from Africa so that they would both live in the Louisiana waters and eat the thriving hyacinths, and become a meat option for the American diet.

The North Dakota Evening Times was on board with the idea, writing, "Great Britain has eaten the Australian kangaroo and likes him, horseflesh is a staple in continental Europe, and the people of Central America eat the lizard. Why cannot Americans absorb the hippopotamus?" via K2 Radio. But, alas, the bill didn't pass, and U.S. citizens missed their chances of eating hippo steaks and slurping hippo soup. For now, they're happy with chicken soup, which almost half considered their favorite soup when we took a poll. Today, introducing hippo meat would be an extremely hard sell to Americans; after all, in 2022, many even sought to win a painting by an adorable hippo who lived in the Cincinnati Zoo.