THE SILVERWARE SERIES
#13 THE SILVERWARE CIRCLE
From the Stone Age with rocks, bones, sticks and shells as the early Silverware of our ancestors who walked around dragging their fingers just after they lost their tails (Well, there are still a lot of people losing their tails) and were discovering how to build and transport fire to the Information/Digital/Experience Age of today, we have our history that was formed by Silverware (maybe some other stuff too, most mostly Silverware).
Where the circle has brought us is Full Circle. From Paleolithic to Popeye’s Chicken turns out to be very similar; what started out as people who picked up their food in their hands and gnawed it and picked it apart with their fingers has come full circle. From being trained for the past one hundred years by White Castle, McDonalds’s, Dominoes, Wendy’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Burger King, Taco Bell, Subway, Pizza Hut and dozens of others we have been re-taught to not use Silverware, but to eat with our fingers with no Silverware in sight.
What once seemed so Cave Person is now normal and sitting down to a dinner with Silverware (especially with more than the knife, fork and spoon) is rare indeed. We have gone through the Nine Major periods of history and subsets of Silverware development:
Stone Age: 3.3 million to 5,000 years ago.
Bronze Age: 5,000 to 1,400 years ago (1,200 BC)
Iron Age: 1,200 BC to 500 BC.
Classical Era: 500 BC to 500 AD.
Medieval Era: 500 AD to 1500 AD.
Early Modern Era: 1500 AD to 1800 AD.
Modern Era: 1800 AD to present.
Silverware was developed from the Stone Age to the Fast Food Age. From White Castle fast food in Wichita, Kansas in 1916 as the first with many soon to follow, we have circled back to being people who sit looking at a cell phone and eating food with our fingers and licking off the juices. We have become very Cave like once again all because we have stopped using Silverware.
No, really, this is what happened and I’m finished telling it.
“And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” Jesus