When Were Knives, Forks, and Spoons First Used?
While knives have been used as tools, weapons, and even to help in food preparation to carve up large pieces of meat, for example-it wasn’t until the Middle Ages (a period ranging from roughly A.D. 500 to around 1500) that people began regularly using knives to get food from their plates to their mouths. Since forks weren’t in use yet, people in that era used knives with narrow blades and pointed ends to spear their food and then eat it. (Historians have pointed out that these weapon like utensils gave the dinner hour the potential for serious violence.) In the late 1600s table knives became blunter and wider, a shape that made them more useful in catching the food that sometimes fell off forks and spoons. People have been using spoons for centuries, and these helpful scoopers were probably among the first eating tools developed by early humans. In prehistoric times spoons were made of curved pieces of shells or wood. During the Middle Ages royal and wealthy citizens used spoons made o
There is no certain date for the first use of these utensils by humans. But we know that knives have been used from the time that cavemen began hunting. Any material that these primitive people found that was hard and sharp became a knife with which to skin animals and cut meat. These same cavemen also used roughly hollowed-out
