 Garlic has been with us since the beginning of time! The Big Bang was caused by garlic? Well, maybe not the beginning of time. But it is one of the oldest known horticultural plants. Going back to the beginning of recorded history. The history of garlic. Preserved garlic fragments have been found in ancient caves. Which suggests we started using garlic as a food seasoning during our hunting and gathering days. Some historians believe that garlic's use could go back as far as 10,000 years, just after the finish of the last Ice Age. Now, garlic gets its name from the old English garlic, or garlic. With gar, meaning spear, which is in reference to the spear-like stock of garlic shoots. There are apparently over 600 different varietals of garlic. But all you really need to remember is that garlic has two primary subspecies. The hardneck garlic. And the softneck garlics. The main difference is that the hardneckers came first. And the softneck heads were slowly developed over time through meticulous selection. There is some confusion as to exactly where garlic originated. Though most say it was from Central Asia. But what really matters is that it quickly went from being unknown to one of the primary crops of the Egyptians. Mesopotamians. Chinese. Indians. And well, really, anyone who came across it. The ancient Egyptians fed it to the workers who built the pyramids. As it was believed to increase strength, fight infections, and improve productivity. Must have worked. I mean, pyramids turned out pretty good. Garlic was so important to the Egyptians that not having enough of it could lead to work stoppages. And after the Nile flooded one year, leading to a big garlic crop failure, the workers revolted because their employers couldn't provide them with garlic. Which was one of only two recorded slave revolts in Egyptian history. And it was over garlic. Garlic was so highly prized, it was even used as currency. But here is where the controversy starts. While it was generally loved by the masses, there were quite a few hoity-toity aristocrats who had a strong aversion to using garlic. And this, as you will see, became true for many different cultures. Fun fact! The oldest known recipe involving garlic comes from a 4000 BC stone tablet in Mesopotamia, which turned out to be a recipe for lamb stew. Garlic in ancient India. In India, garlic became known as the Slayer of Monsters. And it is found in two of the three foundational texts in aerobatic medicine. Sharaka Samhita wrote, But for its unpleasant odor, garlic would be costlier than gold. Unfortunately, the more high-born Brahmin classes and priests weren't allowed to eat garlic. However, this time, it was apparently due to its aphrodisiac qualities. Garlic in ancient Greece. Ancient Greek soldiers would eat loads of garlic before heading off to battle to improve their resilience and bravery. To increase their physical prowess, the athletes for the first Olympic Games would chew a clove of garlic before participating in their event. The famous term for garlic, the stinking rose, is believed to go back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. But we don't have much detail as to why, other than the knowledge that garlic was largely consumed and used by the masses. And most nobles believed it wrong to debase themselves by smelling of garlic. Even weirder! Every Greek who wished to enter the Temple of Civility had to pass a rigorous breath test. And if you smelled a garlic, you wouldn't be allowed to enter. Well, we don't know the exact origins of the term stinking rose. We do know the reason it is more commonly used today is thanks to the French physician Henri Leclerc. In 1918, he translated garlic from the Greek name, scordon, to scion, rodon, and then to the French, rose-pouant, which means stinking rose. On the bright side, most of the physicians of the day loved garlic, including Hippocrates, who said it was great for the lungs, abdominal pain, pulmonary disease, and tumors. Garlic in ancient Rome! Now, this was also true for Roman physician Pandanius discuritis, who wrote about how garlic was good for cleaning arteries. At the time, arteries were believed to carry air through the body, while the veins carried the blood. Still, it is extraordinary for how it foreshadowed how garlic is actually good for clearing out the arteries, which is now backed up by modern science. Bliny the Elder! He's the same cookie guy who mentioned the rubbing garlic on animal genitals thingy. Well, he also mentioned how Romans would wear garlic wreaths and amulets at their infamous orgies, just in case one of the participants needed a little pick-me-up. Garlic in Ancient China! The use of garlic in China dates back to 2600 B.C., when Emperor Huang Ti helped create the foundations of traditional Chinese medicine. It is said that Huang Ti was out walking with his followers. When they stopped to eat the leaves of the yuyu fruit, turns out the leaves were poisonous. But luckily, Huang Ti found some wild garlic growing nearby. He gave it to everyone, and poof! They were all cured. Huang Ti ended up becoming the first person to cultivate garlic in China, and this was just the start of China's enduring love for the plant, to the point where now they produce 80% of the world's garlic. If you're loving this video like the Chinese love garlic, then be sure to hit the like button, subscribe, and dunk the bell so you don't miss any future videos. Garlic through the Middle Ages! Despite it being loved big time by the masses who came in contact with it, garlic still didn't get recognized by the known world until about 1000 A.D., at which time we see it popping up in most of the prominent monastery gardens of the time. But still, garlic wasn't fully embraced by all the elite. In 1300, if you showed up smelling of garlic in the court of King Alfonso of Castile, he was known for shouting, You weak of garlic, get out! before banning the offending person from court and forbidding them to speak to other courtiers for a week. Luckily, garlic's reputation was helped by an unlikely source. The black plague. At the time, it was widely believed that people who ate lots of garlic could escape the bubonic plague. You could also find garlic used in the Four Thieves vinegar, which also contained famous herbs like sage, lavender, rosemary, and thyme. And later it was found in the iconic beak masks worn by plague doctors of the era. You know, for some reason, when I see those masks, it just makes me think of it seen in Star Wars where that long-nosed guy gets bopped by a stormtrooper in the nose. Yeah, that one. Anyway, many believe that garlic came over with Christopher Columbus. As a shipping manifest from his ship, the Nina is shown to contain barrels of garlic. However, it was already shown that there were different types of garlic already growing in the Americas before he got there. But yes, it is true that early settlers did bring lots of garlic with them in order to create new crops of garlic in the New World. We've got garlic in the Renaissance. Now, it's during this time that garlic really started taking off as a common culinary item in people's kitchens and not just as a medicinal aid. However, thanks to its potency, there were still many negative nellies who disdained garlic for its smelliness. Like good old Shakespeare, who mentions it in a Midsummer Night's Dream. Eat no onions nor garlic for we to utter sweet breath. And I do not doubt but to hear him say it is a sweet comedy. But thankfully it is during this time we see more monarchs coming around to garlic's greatness. Most notably, Henri IV of France, who was so fond of eating it that he became known as the Garlic King. One contemporary even declared that he had breath that would fell an ox at 20 paces. Renaissance herbalist John Parkinson called garlic a remedy for all diseases. And Sir Francis Bacon said that garlic was a good way to postpone senility and death. William Coles talked about how planting garlic would cause moles to leap out of the ground presently. Funny, but actually true, as garlic sulfur content deters both moles and gophers. Always being the contrary naysayer, John Gerard claimed that garlic yielded the body no nourishment at all. But then he went on to say it was good for all kinds of ailments like sore throats, worms, colds, coughs, and more. I guess he changed his mind. Garlic eaters and other slurs. One of the other big things that kept garlic from becoming popular was a foolish stigma that got attached to it because of different people who ate it. Now in the Talmud, the term garlic eater was actually a positive thing and early Jews actually called themselves garlic eaters. But this was quickly turned into a slander against them. First by the early Romans, Emperor Marcus Aurelius is even quoted as calling Jews malodorous garlic eaters when he returned from Palestine. This particular slur ended up going worldwide and was used to insult other cultures and countries as well. In the 16th century, you could find the Japanese calling Koreans garlic eaters. And the use of this term was actually quite prominent until the 1950s and 60s. You can even find it used against Italians in It's a Wonderful Life where Mr. Potter says, trapped into filtering his life away, playing nursemaid to a lot of garlic eaters. And this wasn't the only garlic related term used to defame others. Originally, pilled garlic, pilled garlic was a term used against people who were bald or going bald. But it ended up being the Italians who got the worst of it, as they were not only called garlic eaters, but garlic was also referred to as Bronx Vanilla, Halitosis and Italian Perfume, all of which were used to slander Italian American immigrants. Garlic in the 1800s to modern times. While xenophobic problems plagued garlic's reputation, its medicinal and culinary properties were just too incredible to stop its inevitable growth in fame. But it wasn't easy. In 1858, Louis Pasteur, the same guy who's responsible for pasteuration, determined just how effective garlic is as an antibacterial agent. In his research, he found garlic to be more effective than penicillin in certain situations. It was even used in World War I and World War II as a wound healer and a treat gangrene. Russian soldiers ran out of penicillin during the war, and they started using garlic instead. So World War II doctors started referring to garlic as Russian penicillin. So if so many people know how great garlic is, why isn't it fully embraced by the public? Well, for one, people are just plain stubborn. Brits ended up shunning garlic for a long time starting in World War II as they were forced to ration food. And being all resentful of tasty, tasty food, started considering garlic as foreign muck. Americans were even worse, though, as American chefs would often substitute onions for garlic. Early cookbooks from around the turn of the 20th century had little to no garlic recipes. One cookbook by Oscar Scherke had 3,455 recipes, and only one had garlic. As late as 1961, out of 1,500 recipes, the New York Times cookbook contained only 2 recipes with garlic in the title, and only a few dozen with garlic included, most of them listing it as optional. And it wasn't until more and more immigrants started coming into America that garlic really started gaining a foothold in the USA. And it may be hard for many to believe that garlic had such a hard time getting to where it is, as now, the average American eats 2 pounds of garlic per year. Though this is a far cry from the average Korean, who eats almost 22 and a half pounds of garlic every year. Woo! Bring on the breath mints, baby! That is a lot of tasty, tasty garlic. There are now thousands of garlic recipes, garlic festivals, and even a famous restaurant called The Stinking Rose, located in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Yes, garlic as stinky as it can be is now beloved all over the world and with very good reason, as it is one of the best medicinal foods you can have. And frankly, it just makes food so darn tasty. What's your go-to garlic recipe? Let me know in the comments down below. If you want to see more about garlic, then watch Why Do Vampires Hate Garlic Next, or go ahead and watch The History of Basil Next. Please be kind, take care of each other, and feel free to eat more garlic. Though you might want to break out the breath mints for that garlic breath, just to be safe.