The "The Early Methods Of Preparing Food" Story

It was an ordinary day.  A day when you might be preparing a Christmas meal or just visiting with friends or relatives for a Christmas dinner.  If so, then you are part of a long human history...one that's older than our species.  Scientists estimate that our early human ancestors may have been using fire to prepare their meals almost 2 million years ago, long before Homo sapiens arrived to partake of the meal.  A recent study found what appears to be the leftovers of a roasted carp diner from 780,000 years ago...give or take a few thousand years.  Seems like cooking food helped fuel our evolution by giving us bigger brains and creating the centerpiece of our feasting rituals which gathered us together into communities.  The story of what and how we began to eat became the beginnings of our feasting rituals which brought our various communities together.  The diets of our early human ancestors showed how they feasted and prepared their meals.  Matt Sponheimer, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado has spent time studying the diets of early human ancestors.  The study is based on the shores of an ancient lake.  Artifacts from that lake tell us it was home to Homoerectus, an extinct species of early humans that actually walked upright.  Years and years of digging in the mud at the site tell of the types of fish remains according to Naama Goren-Inbar, an archaeologist.  Many of the teeth species found were from a couple of species of big carp and were from various places where researchers found signs of fire.  Testing of the teeth exposed that the temperature of the sites were hot, but not super-hot which showed that the cooking of the fish was done at a lower temperature rather than a super-hot temperature.  Results from the site show that the humans were using fire for cooking more than three-quarters of a million years ago.  Researchers believe that cooking took place long before the time that was determined, but don't have anymore evidence to back up their theories.  Perhaps in the near future, cooking sites will be found and will show more about the techniques used for preparing food.  But, for now, I'm afraid we will have to cook Christmas dinner the way we have for the past couple of years!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.