The first evidence of the use of fire for cooking is in Israel and is from 780,000 years ago

It's one of the first things you learn in school.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
15 November 2022 Tuesday 06:59
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The first evidence of the use of fire for cooking is in Israel and is from 780,000 years ago

It's one of the first things you learn in school. Mastery of fire was a giant step in human evolution. Bonfires made it possible to fight against the cold, avoid the attack of fierce wild animals and, above all, cook food. Passing the food over the coals not only eliminated most parasites and diseases of raw meat or toxic vegetables, but also reduced the energy consumption needed to carry out the heavy digestion.

This control of the flames also occurred tens of thousands of years earlier than previously believed. This is stated by a team of researchers from Israel in an article published in the journal Nature Ecology

Prehistoric humans fished out this more than two-meter-long animal around 780,000 years ago and ate it, once cooked, at the Gesher Benot Ya'aqov archaeological site, located around the Jordan River, near the Israeli border. and Lebanon.

Until now, the first evidence of cooking dates back to approximately 170,000 years ago, coinciding with the emergence of Homo Sapiens. That is to say, some 600,000 years later than what the carp found in Israeli territory testifies to. "Cooking is defined as the ability to process food by controlling the temperature at which it is heated and includes a wide range of methods," experts say.

“Our study demonstrates the enormous importance of fish in the lives of prehistoric humans, for their diet and economic stability. With the fish remains found, we were able to reconstruct, for the first time, the population of ancient Lake Hula and show that it was home to fish species that became extinct over time,” report Dr. Irit Zohar and Professor Naama Goren-Inbar, lead authors of the study. study.

The experts analyzed the pharyngeal teeth (used to grind hard foods such as shells) belonging to fish of the carp family. These teeth were found in large numbers in different archaeological strata at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov.

By studying the structure of the crystals that make up tooth enamel (whose size increases with exposure to heat), the researchers were able to prove that fish caught year-round in ancient Lake Hula, adjacent to the site, were exposed to suitable cooking temperatures and were not simply burned by spontaneous fire.

“Hula Lake species included giant carp reaching up to 2 meters in length. The large amount of fish remains found at the site demonstrates its frequent consumption by early humans, who developed special cooking techniques, controlling fire to cook food”, adds Zohar.

Naama Goren-Inbar considers that the remains of cooking over such a long period of time as the one discovered in Israel "indicates a continuous tradition of cooking food" which would demonstrate "the high cognitive abilities of the Acheulean hunter-gatherers of the Hula Valley" .

“These groups were deeply knowledgeable about their environment and the various resources it offered them. In addition, they had extensive knowledge of the life cycles of different species of plants and animals. Acquiring the skill required to cook food marks a significant evolutionary advance, as it provided an additional means of making optimal use of available food resources,” he adds.

Specialists even point out the possibility that the cuisine was not limited to fish, but also included various types of animals and plants. "We don't know exactly how the carp were cooked - says Dr. Jens Najorka, from the Natural History Museum in London - but the experiments carried out show that it was cooked at a low temperature. The fish was not put directly into the fire or thrown away as waste.”