The Fork
The history of the utensil
The fork is a latecomer to the table. Knives are the
descendants of sharpened hand axes—the oldest human tools. It is likely
that the first spoons derived from whichever local objects were used to
scoop up liquid: The word for spoon in both Latin and Greek derives from
a snail shell while the Anglo-Saxon spon means chip.
The shape of the fork has been around a lot longer than the eating
utensil. In ancient Greece, Poseidon brandished a trident while mortals
had large forked tools to pull food out of boiling pots. But
the fork didn't have a place at the Greek table, where people used spoons, knife points, and their hands.