New research suggests that using fire to cook food started 600,000 years previously thought. Archeologists the Tel Aviv University's Steinhardt Museum of Natural History Israel assert that our early ancestors cooked fish fire 770,000 years ago. The archaeologists claim that these prehistoric humans, who lived the banks the Jordan River in what is present-day northern Israel, used fire to cook the "huge fish" they caught a nearby lake. They say their finding is the earliest recorded evidence food being cooked. Until this new discovery, scientists believed the first "definitive evidence" cooking was by Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens, 170,000 years ago.
Lead researcher Irit Zohar spent 16 years analyzing ancient fish bones and the enamel found fish teeth. Her analysis showed that the grilled baked fish had been eaten 770 millennia ago. She told the AFP news agency that: "It was facing a puzzle, more and more information until we could make a story human evolution." She added that her biggest conundrum was to ascertain whether or not the fish had been eaten raw and then their bones thrown the fire, or whether it had been cooked first. She said: "The whole question about exposure to fire is whether it is about getting rid remains or a desire to cook." She said the fish were two-metre-long carp, that would have been particularly succulent when cooked.
