An international team of scientists working in the northern region of the Dead Sea has claimed to have found the earliest signs of cooking. These signs date back hundreds of thousands of years before the emergence of Homo sapiens.
According to Science Alert, a 780,000-year-old kitchen was discovered on the shores of the Dead Sea, in an archaeological site named Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, located within the territory of Israel.
One of the ancient roasted carp dishes served here provides the oldest tangible evidence that humans knew how to use fire for cooking.
An extinct hominin invented cooking, marking a significant milestone for humanity – (Illustrative image from Archaeology News Network)
Previously, charred remains and burnt bones linked to Homo erectus, who lived about 1.5 million years ago, were found in Africa. However, this does not confirm whether they were cooking or if the remains were simply from an animal burned during a ritual or due to natural conditions.
In the Eurasian continent, there was never similar evidence. There was even a common hypothesis that it was not until the emergence of Homo sapiens that humanity started using fire for cooking.
The previous record of concrete evidence was a pit oven in Africa, approximately 170,000 years old, believed to belong to either Homo sapiens or Neanderthals, a sibling species that went extinct only 30,000-40,000 years ago and often coexisted with our ancestors.
However, with an age of 780,000 years, it is clear that the individuals who lit this new record-setting fire were not part of our species, as Homo sapiens only appeared around 300,000 years ago.
According to archaeologist Jens Najoka from the Natural History Museum in London, the traces on these ancient fish indicate that they were roasted over fire like our grilled meats and fish, rather than being directly burned by being thrown into the fire.
Thus, it is clear that fish were indeed cooked, which eradicates the previously vague history of how Homo sapiens discovered fire.
This is a significant discovery that enhances and rewrites human history, demonstrating how advanced human brain and civilization had developed at that time.
“Acquiring the necessary skills to cook food marks an important evolutionary step as it provides additional means to optimally utilize available food resources,” stated archaeologist Naama Goren-Inbar from the Hebrew University (Jerusalem, Israel).
The research has just been published in the scientific journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.
