The Original Jerky

The tasty dried meat product called jerky, available nearly everywhere, and made of nearly every conceivable kind of meat, has a name which is derived from the South American version called ch'arki.

Although preserving meat in a smoked, salted or freeze-dried way was certainly not (only) invented in South America, ch'arki refers to a preserved meat from the highland Andes of Peru, and it is and was made primarily (but not exclusively) from llama and alpaca meat. Ch'arki's archaeological history is pretty slim, Jim (if you'll pardon the expression), so we have to rely on ethnographic reports on traditional cooking methods. That makes it a pretty interesting story...

• Read more about Ch'arki
• Read about the Schlep Effect, an interpretive methodology derived by archaeologists
• Read about Llamas and Alpacas