Cuisine and Culture
A History of Food and People
Chapter One
From Raw to Cooked:
PREHISTORY, MESOPOTAMIA,
EGYPT, CHINA, INDIA
PREHISTORY
Animals don't cook. The ability to use fire is one of the crucial things
that separates us from them. Scientists used to think that humans
were different from animals because we use tools and have language.
Then we discovered that animals use tools and can communicate with
each other and sometimes even with us, like Koko, the gorilla who
learned sign language. As Stephen Pyne, the world's leading authority
on fire, points out, there may be "elements of combustion" on other planets,
but so far, "We are uniquely fire creatures on a uniquely fire planet."
Humans Learn to Find Foods: Hunting and Gathering
Scientists believe that humans evolved for millions of years before they
learned to use fire about 500,000 to one million years ago. The oldest
fossils so far, excavated mainly in Africa, put the beginning of humanlike
creatures-hominids-at between six and seven million years ago.
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