“It is even possible that cooking was not limited to fish, but also included various types of animals and plants,” said Professor Naama Goren-Inbar from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who directed the excavation. Source: NYC – AMNH: Spitzer Hall of Human Origins – Homo Ergaster, Flickr.
Israeli researchers believe that humans might have started cooking thousands of years earlier than previously thought.
Experts were working at an archaeological site in Israel known as Gesher Benot Ya’aqov when they came across clusters of fish teeth, but to their surprise, there were no fish bones found on site.
Their first thought was that the early humans who inhabited the site used a low-heat to cook the fish, which would mean the bones would disintegrate.
Scientists put this to the test, using X-ray diffraction which measured the crystal sizes in the tooth enamel according to Smithsonian Magazine, who suggested that this would change if exposed to a fire.
Co-study author Jens Najorka said that their research shows these early humans didn’t just throw the fish on the fire but exposed it to a specific temperature that was 198 to 498 degrees Celsius.
“We do not know exactly how the fish were cooked but given the lack of evidence of exposure to high temperatures, it is clear that they were not cooked directly in fire and were not thrown into a fire as waste or as material for burning,” they said.
Another theory they put forward is that the freshwater fish was most likely cooked in an earth oven.
While some have branded this discovery as the earliest sign of cooking, Irit Zohar from the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History in Tel Aviv has said “Evidence of charred material doesn’t mean cooking”.
She added “It just means the food was thrown into the fire” but admitted the evidence does strongly suggest it could have been a possibility.
“Each parameter in itself doesn’t mean cooking, but each one fits together like a puzzle so that we can say, ‘OK, now we see that it’s correlated to cooking,” she said.
“If they already knew how to control fire, then it’s just logical that they would use it for cooking.”
