New Idea Suggests Meat Preservation, Not Cooking, Drove Early Fireplace Use

Lots of of 1000’s—if not over 1,000,000—years in the past, people discovered the best way to make hearth. This may show to be one of the crucial necessary developments in prehistoric human growth, however the origin of this important discovery stays a contentious subject amongst students.

In a study revealed final month within the journal Frontiers, researchers from Tel Aviv College proposed a brand new principle for what prompted people to begin making and controlling fires: to guard their meals from animals, and, most notably, to increase the prehistoric shelf lifetime of their meat via smoking and drying. In different phrases, prehistoric speck. The scientists declare to be the primary to suggest this speculation, which aligns with a broader principle they’ve been growing: that humans’ consumption of large animals—after which smaller ones when the megafauna turned extinct—drove necessary prehistoric developments.

“The origins of fireside use is a ‘burning’ subject amongst prehistory researchers around the globe. It’s usually agreed that by 400,000 years in the past, hearth use was frequent in home contexts—almost certainly for roasting meat, and maybe additionally for lighting and heating,” co-author Ran Barkai defined in a statement. “Nonetheless there may be controversy concerning the previous million years, and numerous hypotheses have been put ahead to clarify why early people started utilizing hearth. On this examine, we sought to discover a brand new perspective on the problem.”

Earlier than round 400,000 years in the past, early people similar to Homo erectus used hearth solely often, “in particular locations and for particular functions,” co-author Miki Ben-Dor defined. Beginning and sustaining a hearth was an arduous course of that required a “compelling, energy-efficient motive.”

To research this motive, Barkai and Ben-Dor studied earlier analysis on all recognized prehistoric websites with proof of fireside use from between 1.8 million and 800,000 years in the past, amounting to 9 areas. Their evaluation revealed that every one 9 websites featured an abundance of enormous animal stays, together with elephants, hippopotamuses, and rhinoceroses.

“From earlier research, we all know that these animals had been extraordinarily necessary to early human diets and offered many of the essential energy. The meat and fats of a single elephant, for instance, comprise thousands and thousands of energy, sufficient to feed a bunch of 20–30 individuals for a month or extra,” Ben-Dor stated. A efficiently hunted elephant or hippopotamus was “a type of meat and fats ‘financial institution’ that wanted to be protected and preserved for a lot of days because it was coveted not solely by predators but additionally by micro organism.”

The researchers’ evaluation of the 9 prehistoric websites, mixed with their calculations of the potential “energetic benefit” of preserving giant recreation and observations of recent hunter-gatherer societies, culminated in the concept that people had been motivated to make hearth to each defend their meat “banks” from different animals and to smoke and dry them for long-term preservation. As soon as people adopted hearth to serve these means, they could have additionally used it for cooking “at zero marginal energetic value,” Barkai added. In different phrases, hearth was initially used to smoke and dry meat, and solely later repurposed for cooking.

The researchers say their strategy backs a much bigger principle they’ve been growing—one which sees main prehistoric modifications as reactions to shifts in weight loss plan. Early on, that meant searching massive animals, however as these species dwindled, individuals began relying extra on smaller recreation for meals.

Whereas we already knew that historical people, together with the enduring Ötzi the Iceman and ancient Native Americans in southwest Florida, had been curing and smoking meats 1000’s of years in the past, the researchers’ new principle predates this strategy by a whole bunch of 1000’s of years, and contextualizes it inside one of the crucial necessary prehistoric human developments recognized to science.