2.5-1.8 million years ago: The discovery of the use of fire and the sharing of the benefits of the use of fire may have created a sense of sharing as a group.
2 myr ago: Hominids shift away from the consumption of nuts and berries to begin the consumption of meat.
250,000 years ago: Hearths appear, accepted archeological estimate for invention of cooking.
170,000 years ago: Cooked starchy roots and tubers in Africa
40,000 years ago: First evidence of human fish consumption: isotopic analysis of the skeletal remains of Tianyuan man, a modern human from eastern Asia, has shown that he regularly consumed freshwater fish.
25,000 years ago: The fish-gorge, a kind of fish hook, appears.
13,000 BCE: Contentious evidence of oldest domesticated rice in Korea. Their 15,000-year age challenges the accepted view that rice cultivation originated in China about 12,000 years ago. These findings were received by academia with strong skepticism, and the results and their publicizing has been cited as being driven by a combination of nationalist and regional interests.
11,500 - 6200 BCE: Genetic evidence published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America shows that all forms of Asian rice, both indica and japonica, spring from a single domestication that occurred 8,200–13,500 years ago in China of the wild rice Oryza rufipogon.
~7000 BCE: Farmers in China began to farm rice and millet, using man-made floods and fires as part of their cultivation regimen.
~7000 BCE: Maize-like plants, derived from the wild teosinte, began to be seen in Mexico.
~7000 BCE: Chinese villagers were brewing fermented alcoholic drinks on small and individual scale, with the production process and methods similar to that of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia.
~7000 BCE: Sheep, originating from western Asia, were domesticated with the help of dogs prior to the establishment of settled agriculture,
6570-4530 BCE: Earliest and controversial estimation of rice cultivation in India.
6140-4550 BCE: Archaeological evidence of fish processing and long-term storage, at the Atlit-Yam site, in what is now Israel.
4000 BCE: Citron seeds in Mesopotamian excavations.
~3900 BCE: In Mesopotamia, early evidence of beer is a Sumerian poem honoring Ninkasi, the patron goddess of brewing, which contains the oldest surviving beer recipe, describing the production of beer from barley via bread.
~3000 BCE: Grape cultivation for wine had spread to the Fertile Crescent, the Jordan Valley and Egypt.
~3000 BCE: Sunflowers are first cultivated in North America.
~3000 BCE: South America's Andes region cultivates potato.
~3000 BCE: Archaeological evidence of watermelon cultivation in ancient Egypt. Watermelons appeared on wall paintings; seeds and leaves were deposited in tombs.
~3000 BCE: Beer was spread through Europe by Germanic and Celtic tribes
~3000 BCE: Two alabaster jars found at Saqqara, dating from the First Dynasty of Egypt, contained cheese. These were placed in the tomb about 3000 BC.
~2500 BCE: Domestic pigs, which are descended from wild boars, are known to have existed about 2500 BC in modern-day Hungary and in Troy; earlier pottery from Jericho and Egypt depicts wild pigs.
~2500 BCE: Pearl millet was domesticated in the Sahel region of West Africa, evidence for the cultivation of pearl millet in Mali.
2500-1500 BCE: Time range of several sites with archaeological evidence of potato being consumed and cultivated in the South American continent.
2000-1500 BCE: Rice cultivation in the upper and middle Ganges begins.
~2000 BCE: Visual evidence of Egyptian cheesemaking found in Egyptian tomb murals.
~1900 BCE: Evidence for cheese in the Sumerian cuneiform texts of Third Dynasty of Ur
~1900 BCE: Evidence of chocolate drinks in Mokaya and other pre-Olmec people
~400 BCE: Confirmed written evidence of ancient beer production in Armenia, from Xenophon's Anabasis
327-324 BCE: Alexander the Great expedition to India brings the knowledge of rice to Romans. However rice did not enter as a cultivation: the Romans preferred to import rice wine instead.
~300 BCE: Citron brought to Greece by Alexander the Great.
~200 BCE: Citron brought to Palestine by Greek colonists.
1st century BCE: Horace mentions Spanish garum ; Spain dominates the fish market.
1-1000
8th century: The original type of sushi, known today as narezushi, first developed in Southeast Asia and spread to south China, is introduced to Japan.
8th century: Chronicles from monasteries mention Roquefort being transported across the Alps
9th century: First record of cucumbers cultivation in France
~800: Cod becomes an important economic commodity in international markets. This market has lasted for more than 1,000 years, enduring the Black Death, wars and other crises, and is still an important Norwegian fish trade.
~800: By this date, watermelon reaches India.
822: First mention of hops added to beer, by a Carolingian Abbot
961: Watermelons, introduced by the Moorish, reported to be cultivated in Cordoba, Spain.
997: The term "pizza" first appears "in a Latin text from the southern Italian town of Gaeta , which claims that a tenant of certain property is to give the bishop of Gaeta 'duodecim pizze' every Christmas Day, and another twelve every Easter Sunday".
1000-1500
11th-14th century: Ireland stores and ages butter in peat bogs, being known as bog butter. The practice is effectively ended by the 19th century.
12th century: Oldest butter export of Europe, from Scandinavia
~1100: Wafers are introduced from France into Britain, by the Normans. They were cake-like, however, not crisp like what we today call wafers.
~1100: Watermelons reach China.
1158: Evidence of watermelons cultivated in Seville.
1516: William IV, Duke of Bavaria, adopted the Reinheitsgebot, perhaps the oldest food-quality regulation still in use in the 21st century, according to which the only allowed ingredients of beer are water, hops and barley-malt.
1535: Spanish conquerors first see potato.
~1550: First mention of cucumbers cultivation in North America.
~1570: First potato specimens probably reach Spain.
1573: Potatoes are purchased by the Hospital de la Sangre in Seville.
1576: Watermelons cultivated in Florida by Spanish settlers.
1578: Sir Francis Drake meets potatoes in his trip around the world. However he does not bring potatoes back to Great Britain, despite common misconception.
1583-1613: Guaman Poma de Ayala writes a chronicle of the Incas where he describes and depicts potato and maize cultivation.
1585: First recorded shipment of chocolate to Europe for commercial purposes, in a shipment from Veracruz to Sevilla
1596: Caspar Bauhin, Swiss botanist, first describes potato scientifically in his Phytopinax, assigning it the current binomial nameSolanum tuberosum. However he conjectured potatoes could cause wind and leprosy and that they were aphrodisiac.
Before 17th century: Watermelon appears in herbals in mainland Europe, outside Spain. It also begins to spread among Native American populations.
Late 16th century-17th century: Cucumber, along with maize, beans, squash, pumpkins, and gourds are cultivated by Native Americans in what is today southern United States and, later, the region of Great Plains.
18th century: Soufflé appears in France. Cakes and pastries also begin to appear, thanks to the increasing availability of sugar and the rising of the chef profession.
1772: Antoine-Augustin Parmentier writes the treaty Examen chymique des pommes de terres, promoting the introduction of potato in France.
1774-1779: First shops selling ice cream appear in North America.
1778: Captain James Cook introduces watermelons to the Hawaii islands.
1794: Potatoes are finally firmly part of the Dutch cuisine.
19th century
Early 1800s: West African farmers began to export palm oil.
1800s: New potato varieties are brought from Chile to Europe, in an attempt to widen disease resistance of European potatoes. The import could have instead introduced or heightened vulnerability to the fungus Phytophthora infestans.
1801: G. H. Bent Company starts producing Bent's water crackers, one of the earliest branded foods.
1802 The first modern production process for dried milk was invented by the Russian physician Osip Krichevsky in 1802. The first commercial production of dried milk was organized by the Russian chemist M. Dirchoff in 1832. In 1855, T.S. Grimwade took a patent on a dried milk procedure, though a William Newton had patented a vacuum drying process as early as 1837.
1841: Edmond Albius, a 12-year-old slave who lived on the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, discovered that vanilla could be hand-pollinated. Hand-pollination allowed global cultivation of the plant.
1843: Nancy M. Johnson invents the hand cranked freezer, credited for the fast diffusion of ice cream.
1845-1852: Potato blight infection leads to famine in Ireland, killing or forcing the emigration of 1 and a half million Irish people.
