Our ways of eating and our common
trinity of knife, fork and spoon have
only been in existence for a surprisingly short time. In fact,
chopsticks
and fingers still have a
numerical advantage :)
Of course,
precursors of knives, forks and spoons have existed since
prehistoric times, but only to prepare the
meal, not to eat it.
In the
antique, people ate with their
fingers, as they did in the
middle ages.
Many people had an all purpose
knife with them, which they used to chop up their food.
Wooden
spoons were also common.
But where was the
fork? In fact, the first mentioning of a fork dates from the year
1023. But even in 1518
Martin Luther exclaimed: "Gott behüte mich vor Gäbelchen!"
(May God protect me from forks!)
Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote in 1530:
"What is served is to be taken up with three fingers or a piece of bread".
Last not least, at his grand court in
Versailles in the 17th century the
"
sun king"
Louis XIV allegedly "seized the ragout with his paws".
Resistance against the fork came, interestingly, from the
Catholic Church, the
reason being that it was seen as an attribute of the
Devil (the trident is
actually the symbol of
Neptune/
Poseidon, but it is true that
Satan is also
often depicted wielding it). A funny argument was that
God gave man the fingers,
so use them! Still, in the course of the 17th century a minority started using
forks, but that was seen as unmanly and finicky.
That was paradoxically also the
reason for its
breakthrough in the beginning
of the 18th century. Suddenly it was elegant to use a fork, and the
cutlery
could not be
ostentatious enough. By the latter half of the 19th century
eating with knife and fork was common in all
classes of society and a
sign of
civilization and
culture.
Source: http://www.wienerzeitung.at/frameless/lexikon.htm?ID=449