Burned fish teeth offer clue to mankind's first course of cooking

Researchers at an archaeological dig site in Israel have discovered evidence of burned fish remains that could rewrite widely accepted views about humankind's use of fire as a way of preparing food.

The ability to cook food, which could then be chewed and digested, was a significant step in human development and is thought to have played a role in geographical expansion and movement.

According to the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, until recently the most widely accepted date for evidence of cooking by early Homo Sapiens was around 170,000 years ago.

But Irit Zohar, an archaeologist at the Tel Aviv University Steinhardt Museum of Natural History in Israel, said thousands of fish remains found at a site called Gesher Benot Ya'aqov in the north of the country, which was a lake near the Jordan river until it was drained in the 1950s, could push that date back by more than 600,000 years.

"It was like facing a puzzle, with more and more information until we could make a story about human evolution," she told the AFP news agency.

The first significant clue was the discovery of fish teeth, which can survive at higher temperatures than bones. Burned flints found nearby suggested the presence of a fireplace, and the preponderance of two particular types of carp among the remains adds weight to the theory that the fish were selected for their cookability.

London's Natural History Museum carried out analysis of the tooth enamel, and the way it had been affected by heat suggested they had been cooked to a heat that would be regarded as well done. Cooking techniques are unclear although there is a suggestion some kind of oven may have been used.

Naama Goren-Inbar, a professor from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who directed the excavation, said the evolution of food and diet was a major event in human growth.

"Gaining the skill required to cook food marks a significant evolutionary advance, as it provided an additional means for making optimal use of available food resources," she said.

"It is even possible that cooking was not limited to fish, but also included various types of animals and plants."

No human remains have been found at the site, and the evidence is not conclusive, however.

"You cannot immediately correlate the control of fire with cooking unless you show that the food has been cooked," said Zohar. "Evidence of charred material doesn't mean cooking … it just means the food was thrown into the fire."

It is thought that Homo Erectus mastered fire around 1.7 million years ago, for warmth, and Zohar commented, "because you can control fire for warming, that does not mean you control it for cooking — they could have eaten the fish next to the fire."