Prehistoric BBQ! Oldest evidence of using fire to cook food was 780,000 years ago when early humans cooked 6.5ft-long carp
- Until now, earliest evidence of using fire to cook food was 170,000 years ago
- A new discovery – the teeth of a carp – pushes this date back 610,000 years
- The fish had been exposed to low temperatures suitable for cooking and had not simply been burned by a spontaneous fire
Prehistoric humans first cooked with fire at least 780,000 years ago, a new discovery has revealed.
The ability to cook food was a pivotal step in our evolution, it is thought, and allowed our ancestors to spend less time chewing and digesting hard, raw food.
This freed up energy to enable larger brain growth – allowing us to become the intelligent species we are today.
Prehistoric humans first cooked with fire at least 780,000 years ago, a new discovery has revealed (artist’s impression)
Until now the earliest evidence of controlling a fire to cook food dated to approximately 170,000 years ago. But a new discovery, involving the teeth of an enormous two metre (6.5ft)-long carp, pushes this date back 610,000 years
Until now the earliest evidence of controlling a fire to cook food dated to approximately 170,000 years ago.
But a new discovery, involving the teeth of an enormous two metre (6.5ft)-long carp, pushes this date back 610,000 years.
A team of Israeli researchers analysed the remains of a large fish found at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, an archaeological site in the north of the country.
By looking closely at the teeth, they were able to work out that the fish had been exposed to low temperatures suitable for cooking and had not simply been burned by a spontaneous fire.
One of the researchers, Dr Jens Najorka from the Natural History Museum in London, said: ‘In this study, we used geochemical methods to identify changes in the size of the tooth enamel crystals, as a result of exposure to different cooking temperatures.
‘When they are burnt by fire, it is easy to identify the dramatic change in the size of the enamel crystals, but it is more difficult to identify the changes caused by cooking at temperatures between 200 and 500 degrees Celsius.
‘The experiments I conducted…allowed us to identify the changes caused by cooking at low temperatures.
‘We do not know exactly how the fish were cooked but given the lack of evidence of exposure to high temperatures, it is clear that they were not cooked directly in fire, and were not thrown into a fire as waste or as material for burning.’
By looking closely at the teeth, they were able to work out that the fish had been exposed to low temperatures suitable for cooking and had not simply been burned by a spontaneous fire
Professor Naama Goren-Inbar, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, added: ‘Gaining the skill required to cook food marks a significant evolutionary advance, as it provided an additional means for making optimal use of available food resources.
‘It is even possible that cooking was not limited to fish, but also included various types of animals and plants.’
The findings were published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
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