WHEN DID FIRE FOR COOKING FOOD FIRST BEGIN?
I have been thinking about this question for a while and there are a few different scientific pieces of information for answers. Traces of ash found in the Wonderwerk cave in South Africa indicates that hominins were controlling fire at least 1 million years ago, the time of our direct ancestor Homo erectus. Burnt bone fragments also found at this site suggest that Homo erectus was cooking meat. However, the oldest remains of obvious hearths are 400,000 years old. There is also some earlier evidence that our species was cooking dates just 20,000 years ago, when the first pots were made in China. Scorch marks and soot on outer surfaces of the pots point to their use as cooking utensils. The archaeological evidence seems to not be definitive on an exact date for when earliest man and woman began using fire to cook our food.
Around 1.9 million years ago some major changes occurred in hominin biology. Compared with its ancestors, Homo erectus had very small teeth, a small body and a much larger brain. There is a controversial hypothesis by primatologist Richard Wrangham, these changes were driven by cooked food. Wrangham believes that cooking drove our lineage’s divergence from more ape-like ancestors and that the bodies of Homo sapiens couldn’t exist without cooked food.
Cooking improved our ancestors’ lives as heat makes food softer, so that means less time due to less chewing. Heat-treated food is safer versus scavenged meat that has high levels of pathogens. Another benefit of cooking is that it makes otherwise inedible foods, such as tubers, edible.
Food usually tastes better when cooked. We did not know if our ancestors appreciated cooked food versus raw, but studies with apes found that they prefer their food cooked, choosing baked potatoes, carrots and sweet potatoes over raw ones most of the time.
Today, an estimated three billion people worldwide still cook their meals over open fires. There is something about fire and cooking that goes deep in our DNA; we feel it from the campfire to the gas stove or fire pit and backyard grill. Something to think about while you flip the burger or chicken or veggies on the grill. More at https://www.nationalgeographic.com/…/a-brief-history-of-co…/
