Early human ancestors living 780,000 years ago liked their fish well-done, Israeli researchers revealed Monday, in what they said was the earliest evidence of fire being used to cook.
Exactly when our ancestors started cooking has been a matter of controversy among archaeologists because it is difficult to prove that an ancient fireplace was used to prepare food, and not just for warmth....
Previously, the first "definitive evidence" of cooking was by Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens 170,000 years ago, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
The study, which pushes that date back by more than 600,000 years, is the result of 16 years of work by its first author Irit Zohar, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University's Steinhardt Museum of Natural History.
During that time she has catalogued thousands of fish remains found at a site called Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in northern Israel.
That's pushing it back quite a lot!
The evidence is that certain fish teeth have been found in fireplaces and seem to have been "cooked". They are from a very large carp species:
And most of the teeth belonged to just two particularly large species of carp, suggesting they had been selected for their "succulent" meat, the study said. Some of the carp were over two meters (6.5 feet) long.
Given how much Australians disdain eating carp, these hominids would not do well on today's cooking shows.
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