Food Preservation
Utility
Food preservation is used to allow food to last. Stenza noses are very sensitive to any signs of rot in their food, so prolonged freshness and cleanliness are the goals.
Social Impact
The most dramatic impact the advent of food preservation had on Stenza civilization was the formation of a proper hunting season, as compared to prior consistent hunting in order to feed the group. The changes were gradual, but are readily apparent to historians and archaeologists, and chief among them were changes in the perception of the Snow Pup Hunter, who picked up associations with rules and honorable practices on top of their chief role as the muhto of food. The processing of a kill became ritualized, and offerings became a common practice.
Less time spent hunting also allowed more time to go toward other pursuits. The first fruits of this were arguably the great festivals of First Sunrise, Last Sunset, and Midwinter. Over time, more time could be spent on Weaving, tool manufacture of all kinds, sports and trophy hunting, and the cultivation of a host of artistic pursuits such as storytelling, khe'drakha, an'o, chant, and a million other things that would form cornerstones of Stenza civilization. (While the art of oral literature had been going on for thousands of years beforehand as a means of timekeeping and passing time, it became much more formalized the more time was devoted to it, and many poetic forms common all over khe'drakha developed about or after this time.)
Parent Technologies
Access & Availability
Food preservation technology is ubiquitous, and each clan maintains facilities both in their ground-based settlements around the Ice Flats and on their clan ships. These facilities routinely get raided by pups.
Discovery
Stenza have been striving to preserve food since at least the earliest settlements, which were often in particularly cold areas where meat could be packed and frozen by the elements. Another popular method was the qúṣ, a gelatinous concoction that sealed in moisture and helped stave off decay, and was often a dish in its own right. Advancements were slow until the invention of stasis, originally intended to deal with the Stone Menace but which was originally observed to preserve foods well past their observed decay period. This revolutionized the game, and improvements in stasis technology allowed food to be stored functionally indefinitely.
Related Species
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