Israel 350,000 years ago and the Camp fire

I stumbled upon a topic made by The University of Haifa that humans in Israel made the first camp fire 350.000 years ago, and the reason was to cook food?

It doesnt make any sense, if i was a hominid, why would i cook food in a warm region,

Fire 350.000 years ago

a reply to: wacco

Because humans realised that cooking food destroys pathogens, bacteria, worms etc. It is also better for humans.

I have researched and watched various documentaries about tribes in Africa that eat raw meat, it doesn't compute as either healthy or nutritious.

The development of cooking food is part of humanity's evolution and is required for larger brains.

Cooked food mostly always tastes better IMO. I like meat cooked until melting, raw steak never appealed to me nor bleu /rare, veg and starch also taste better cooked. Cooking releases sugars and oils and makes food so much more interesting and digestible.

en.wikipedia.org...:_How_Cooking_Made_Us_Human

Humans (species in the genus homo) are the only animals that cook their food and Wrangham argues Homo erectus emerged about two million years ago as a result of this unique trait. Cooking had profound evolutionary effect because it increased food efficiency which allowed human ancestors to spend less time foraging, chewing, and digesting.

H. erectus developed a smaller, more efficient digestive tract which freed up energy to enable larger brain growth. Wrangham also argues that cooking and control of fire generally affected species development by providing warmth and helping to fend off predators which helped human ancestors adapt to a ground-based lifestyle. Wrangham points out that humans are highly evolved for eating cooked food and cannot maintain reproductive fitness with raw food.[2]

Which is, in a way, his point: Human beings evolved to eat cooked food. It is literally possible to starve to death even while filling one’s stomach with raw food. In the wild, people typically survive only a few months without cooking, even if they can obtain meat. Wrangham cites evidence that urban raw-foodists, despite year-round access to bananas, nuts and other high-quality agricultural products, as well as juicers, blenders and dehydrators, are often underweight. Of course, they may consider this desirable, but Wrangham considers it alarming that in one study half the women were malnourished to the point they stopped menstruating. They presumably are eating all they want, and may even be consuming what appears to be an adequate number of calories, based on standard USDA tables. There is growing evidence that these overstate, sometimes to a considerable degree, the energy that the body extracts from whole raw foods. Carmody explains that only a fraction of the calories in raw starch and protein are absorbed by the body directly via the small intestine. The remainder passes into the large bowel, where it is broken down by that organ’s ravenous population of microbes, which consume the lion’s share for themselves. Cooked food, by contrast, is mostly digested by the time it enters the colon; for the same amount of calories ingested, the body gets roughly 30 percent more energy from cooked oat, wheat or potato starch as compared to raw, and as much as 78 percent from the protein in an egg. In Carmody’s experiments, animals given cooked food gain more weight than animals fed the same amount of raw food. And once they’ve been fed on cooked food, mice, at least, seemed to prefer it.


Read more: www.smithsonianmag.com...

a reply to: wacco

Back in April :

World's Oldest Stone Tools Found, Predate Homo Genus By 500,000 Years

Also consider that there are alternative ways to start a fire, other than flints, wood friction for ex; and it seems highly unlikely that we would ever be able to find remains from theses.
If primitive hominids are lucky enough, there are also locations in the world where fire occurs naturally : Yanartaş - the one I had the opportunity to visit.

Fire is not just for cooking, it's also about heating, drying, ritual uses ...

a reply to: theabsolutetruth

Because humans realised that cooking food destroys pathogens, bacteria, worms etc. It is also better for humans.

I don't think that's how it started. I think OP is asking why we started doing it. Not how it was beneficial.

So probably because someone got bored and slapped some meat on a fire, ate it for fun and thought it tasted better. Then it became some sort of tradition, and at some point it became obvious people who enjoyed cooked meat lived longer.

I often wonder about how food I consider obvious came to be so obvious. If you're just standing there looking at a cow, with no history it doesn't look very appetizing. I figure early humans saw predators eating, figure WTF I'm hungry and I'll try it, and the Big Mac was created.

a reply to: theabsolutetruth

So if you got sick by eating meat, why just not eat vegetables, in a cold climate you need to cook the food for survival

a reply to: Domo1

Wrong.

Humans evolutionarily were already adapted to eat cooked food from ancestors around 2 million years ago.

The question of this thread is asking the purpose of eating cooked food in a warm region.

The answer is that because humans need to. It also destroys pathogens etc and is part of the human biological condition for optimal functioning and processing nutrients from food.

Hence my answer is perfectly valid and correct.

It doesnt make any sense, if i was a hominid, why would i cook food in a warm region,

originally posted by: theultimatebelgianjoke
a reply to: wacco

Fire is not just for cooking, it's also about heating, drying, ritual uses ...

My point.

Fire, Basics.
1. Heat

a reply to: wacco

As I said and as the research clearly says, because humans are adapted for eating cooked food.

That happened around 2 million years ago, so those humans in Israel 350, 000 years ago, also needed cooked food.

The human biological requirement for cooked food is not altered by a warm climate.

news.bbc.co.uk...

Bigger brain

The eating of meat ties in with an evolutionary shift 2.3 million years ago resulting in a more human-looking ancestor with sharper teeth and a 30% bigger brain, called Homo habilis.

The brain consumes 20% of a person's energy while sitting

The most momentous shift however, happened 1.8 million years ago when Homo erectus - our first "truly human" ancestor arrived on the scene.

Homo erectus had an even bigger brain, smaller jaws and teeth.

Erectus also had a similar body shape to us. Shorter arms and longer legs appeared, and gone was the large vegetable-processing gut, meaning that Erectus could not only walk upright, but could also run.

He was cleverer and faster, and - according to Professor Wrangham - he had learned how to cook.

"Cooking made our guts smaller," he says. "Once we cooked our food, we didn't need big guts.

"They're costly in terms of energy. Individuals that were born with small guts were able to save energy, have more babies and survive better."

Professor Peter Wheeler from Liverpool John Moores University and his colleague, Leslie Aiello, think it was this
change in our digestive system that specifically allowed our brains to get larger.

Energy transfer

Cooking food breaks down its cells, meaning that our stomachs need to do less work to liberate the nutrients our bodies need.

This, says Wheeler, "freed up energy which could then be used to power a larger brain. The increase in brain-size mirrors the reduction in the size of the gut."

Significantly Wheeler and Aiello found that the reduction in the size of our digestive system was exactly the same amount that our brains grew by - 20%.

Professor Stephen Secor at the University of Alabama found that not only does cooked food release more energy, but the body uses less energy in digesting it.

He uses pythons as a model for digestion as they stay still for up to six days while digesting a meal. This makes them the perfect model as the only energy they expend is on digestion.

His research shows that pythons use 24% less energy digesting cooked meat, compared with raw.

So being human might all be down to energy.

Cooking is essentially a form of pre-digestion, which has transferred energy use from our guts to our brains.
According to Professors Wheeler and Wrangham and their colleagues, it is no coincidence that humans - the cleverest species on earth - are also the only species that cooks.

a reply to: theabsolutetruth

If you got sick by eating a mushroom, would you eat that mushroom again? Probably not, if you got sick by eating meat, would you eat it again, probably not, ( Islam, Ethiopian Othodox Church, and Jewish traditions and Pig meat )

Jewish traditions in meat handling is a hygienic tradition, you use religion as a mean for people.

You know and i know, you kill of pathogens, if you go back 1000 years, did they know? No they didnt, go back 350KA did they know, probably not, they did know it was heat.

originally posted by: theultimatebelgianjoke
a reply to: wacco

Fire is not just for cooking, it's also about heating, drying, ritual uses ...

Aboriginals also used fire for war against other tribes, communicating over large distances and farming (burning old growth caused edible plants to spout up). A lot of tribes apparently had a fire stick they would carry around where ever they traveled, so they always had a constant ready source of fire, which was probably a practice passed down since long before humans left Africa.

Fire was incredibly important and even sacred to nomadic humans. I doubt very much the homo species only started using it in a controlled manner only 350,000 years ago.

a reply to: wacco

You do realise that even warm regions experience temperature variation.

Israel sometimes receives snow and the january temperatures are 6-11c.

originally posted by: theabsolutetruth
a reply to: wacco

As I said and as the research clearly says, because humans are adapted for eating cooked food.

That happened around 2 million years ago, so those humans in Israel 350, 000 years ago, also needed cooked food.

The human biological requirement for cooked food is not altered by a warm climate.

news.bbc.co.uk...

Bigger brain

The eating of meat ties in with an evolutionary shift 2.3 million years ago resulting in a more human-looking ancestor with sharper teeth and a 30% bigger brain, called Homo habilis.

The brain consumes 20% of a person's energy while sitting

The most momentous shift however, happened 1.8 million years ago when Homo erectus - our first "truly human" ancestor arrived on the scene.

Homo erectus had an even bigger brain, smaller jaws and teeth.

Erectus also had a similar body shape to us. Shorter arms and longer legs appeared, and gone was the large vegetable-processing gut, meaning that Erectus could not only walk upright, but could also run.

He was cleverer and faster, and - according to Professor Wrangham - he had learned how to cook.

"Cooking made our guts smaller," he says. "Once we cooked our food, we didn't need big guts.

"They're costly in terms of energy. Individuals that were born with small guts were able to save energy, have more babies and survive better."

Professor Peter Wheeler from Liverpool John Moores University and his colleague, Leslie Aiello, think it was this
change in our digestive system that specifically allowed our brains to get larger.

Energy transfer

Cooking food breaks down its cells, meaning that our stomachs need to do less work to liberate the nutrients our bodies need.

This, says Wheeler, "freed up energy which could then be used to power a larger brain. The increase in brain-size mirrors the reduction in the size of the gut."

Significantly Wheeler and Aiello found that the reduction in the size of our digestive system was exactly the same amount that our brains grew by - 20%.

Professor Stephen Secor at the University of Alabama found that not only does cooked food release more energy, but the body uses less energy in digesting it.

He uses pythons as a model for digestion as they stay still for up to six days while digesting a meal. This makes them the perfect model as the only energy they expend is on digestion.

His research shows that pythons use 24% less energy digesting cooked meat, compared with raw.

So being human might all be down to energy.

Cooking is essentially a form of pre-digestion, which has transferred energy use from our guts to our brains.
According to Professors Wheeler and Wrangham and their colleagues, it is no coincidence that humans - the cleverest species on earth - are also the only species that cooks.

A youtube clip

a reply to: wacco

Are you actually reading the things you are writing.

350,000 years ago was BEFORE Judaism.

As I said, humans were already adapted for eating COOKED FOOD around 2 million years ago. The humans of the area now known as Israel 350,000 years ago weren't an exception.

a reply to: Subaeruginosa

Basics, you never do anything if it aint about survival, if its not forced by nature you adopt to the surroundings.

When it becomes a religious behaviour its purpose is lost. When it becomes a luxuory its purpose is lost, meaning cook food cause it tastes better.

I prefer my monkey brains cooked.

originally posted by: wacco
If you got sick by eating a mushroom, would you eat that mushroom again?

I didn't stop drinking after a hangover ...

originally posted by: wacco
... ( Islam, Ethiopian Othodox Church, and Jewish traditions and Pig meat )
Jewish traditions in meat handling is a hygienic tradition, you use religion as a mean for people.

You know and i know, you kill of pathogens, if you go back 1000 years, did they know? No they didnt, go back 350KA did they know, probably not, they did know it was heat.

So the idea of meat cooking came either by accidental discovery or by realising that meal were more pleasant/easily digested when cooked. It's not like Talmudic or Coranic recommendations taught the humans they should cook or what they should eat. If pork meat conservation may seems tricky under Mediterranean climate, I don't think fish or poultry would be more easy to keep fresh in the same circumstances.

a reply to: theabsolutetruth

Raw foods should only be eaten once in a while. Usually as a sort of supplement. Plants for example has small doses of poisons that take the body a while to digest and filter out, eating them on a daily basis could have negative effects like gall bladder and kidney stones, bile build ups in liver, etc.
So cook your veggies!

a reply to: strongfp

And you posted that comment to me because?

I advocate cooking food and I just posted large amounts of research about it.

a reply to: theultimatebelgianjoke

at the risk of stating the obvious - look at a chicken - then a pig

a single family can polish of the entire chicken in a single sitting

now what do you do with 40kg of left over pork ???????????

a reply to: ignorant_ape

I was considering that too ...
But I think these considerations are mostly applicable later in the history of man, when the humans have mastered agriculture. First were hunter-gatherers.
When you look at the cave paintings, small and large game were hunted.

I guess the cavemens called their neighbours to finish the dishes since they had not fridge.