If we think about the technology that has most transformed humanity, it is easy for the wheel, the steam engine or the microchip to come to mind in a more current way. However, there is a much older and more fundamental “technology” that literally changed our anatomy: the kitchen.
The evolution. For decades, paleoanthropologists have debated At what exact moment did our ancestors stop consuming raw foods to start processing them through the control of fire. The most recent evidence not only rewrites our chronology, but confirms that mastering cooking was the true driving force of human evolution.
How do you know? Date something as precise as the beginning of cooking, but the reality is that Until recently, indisputable evidence of the continued use of fire for cooking They were around 600,000 years old. However, a great finding published in the prestigious magazine Nature in 2022 set back this evolutionary clock.
In this case it was at the site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqovin Israel, remains of large carp teeth were found. With these samples and through advanced techniques such as X-ray diffraction, the researchers demonstrated that these remains had been exposed to controlled and relatively low temperatures, being less than 500 °C.
The first date. With this evidence it seemed quite clear that it was not an accidental fire, but rather that it was dated 780,000 years ago these animals began to be cooked. This is consistent with the fact that Acheulean hunter-gatherers were already exploiting aquatic habitats, selecting nutrient-rich fish and cooking them in what archaeologists call “ghost hearths,” which were structured fire zones.
Another hypothesis. Although direct evidence pointed us back to 780,000 years ago, biological clues suggest that the culinary revolution began much earlier. This is what primatologist Richard Wrangham pointed out, in his book Catching Fire and in subsequent studies published in Current Anthropology, proposing that systematic cooking emerged with Homo erectus approximately 1.9 million years ago.
Your arguments. To be able to give this date, this expert focuses mainly on energy efficiency, since he points out that cooking predigests food, breaking down fibers and starches. This allows you to obtain many more calories with minimal effort. But the most relevant thing is that by facilitating digestion, the Homo erectus It no longer needed a massive intestinal tract to process hard, raw vegetables.
And here size matters, since intestinal tissue and brain tissue are energetically very expensive, and so, by shrinking the intestine, the excess energy could be redirected to the growth of a much larger and more complex brain. But this softer diet also explains why the molars of the Homo erectus They shrank and their jaws became less prominent.
Beyond nutrition. The implementation of cooking not only brought anatomical benefits, but studies indicate that in the case of the first hominids, this was essential for roasting raw meat and killing the bacteria that were inside.
But in addition, fire control and the ability to process food were key tools that facilitated human migration. In reassessments of classic sites, such as the Zhoukoudian caves in China, they confirm that the Homo erectus pekinensis used controlled fire to cook deer meat in specific stratademonstrating that this practice was essential for adapting to colder climates outside of Africa.
Images | Michael Lock
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