Cooking is one of the foundations of any culture, but we humans don’t really know how long we’ve been cooking. A new discovery has limited the era in which this fundamental step was taken: We’ve been setting our food on fire for at least 780,000 years.

Gesher Benot Ya’akov. Analyzing this environment near roads where different hominin species may have left Africa, archaeologists have found numerous remains of these possible ancestors of our species. Along with these remains, however, the researchers found many other objects, including tools, fruits, seeds and nuts, and animal remains.

Among the latter, some remains of a perch-like species. These are the remains that led to the rewriting of culinary history.

We don’t know the recipe. The team responsible for the discovery detailed this in an article published in the journalism. Nature Ecology and Evolution. In it, they detail that it was through crystallization of the enamel of the fish’s teeth that they confirmed that the fish were not set on fire and were cooked after the feast. That is, they have been exposed to a suitable temperature for cooking.

Jens Najorka, one of the study’s authors, said in a press release, “When [los restos] When lit with fire, it is easy to detect the drastic change in size of the glaze crystals, but more difficult to detect changes caused by baking at temperatures between 200 and 500 degrees Celsius.”

“We don’t know exactly how these fish were cooked, but with no evidence of exposure to high temperatures, it’s clear that they were not cooked directly over the fire or thrown into the fire as waste or burning material.”

Between erection and Neanderthals. This is the first reliable evidence we have of hominin culinary habits, but not the earliest evidence of controlled fire use. We know that our ancestors began controlling fire 1.5 million years ago. We know this from the remains left behind. erection still living on the African continent. Bones were found in these remains. In this case, it burned.

This finding significantly limits the period when we started cooking. To date, the earliest evidence of this practice dates back 170,000 years and has also been discovered in Africa. At this point, Neanderthals, the closest species to our own, were already roaming the Earth.

A time of transition. During this time, erection still lived on Earth, along with other species such as Homo luzonensis (those who live very far in Southeast Asia) and Homo ancestorSpecies living in the Atapuerca region.

This last species represented a major evolutionary leap that led to its emergence several hundred thousand years after Neanderthals. homo sapiensand the subgroup that includes us with the latter, “anatomically modern humans”.

Culinary hypothesis. According to some researchers, there is much more behind the kitchen than a cultural issue. Culinary hypothesis (cooking hypothesis), assumes that this tradition has allowed for a significant evolutionary change in human development. The effect was particularly noticeable at the cognitive level.

Cooking gave people the opportunity to extract more nutrients from food in proportion to the amount eaten. This means twofold. On the one hand, more nutrients mean a healthier, more developed and with it a more capable brain. On the other hand, feeding would require less hunting and gathering effort, giving humans time to socialize and learn with it.

One (evolutionary) step forward. Whether the theory is true or not, the advent of the kitchen brought about a radical change for people. In this context, Naama Goren-Inbar, another co-author of the study, pointed out that these hominins are “familiar with their environment and the resources it offers.”

“It also shows that they have extensive knowledge of the life cycles of different plant and animal species. The acquisition of cooking knowledge marks an important evolutionary advance (…). It is even possible that the cuisine is not limited to fish but may even include various animal and plant species”, adds Goren-Inbar.

Image | gildemax, common