A team of researchers in Israel has announced the discovery of what appears to be the earliest evidence of humanity’s ancestors using fire for cooking.
Whereas previously it was believed that early Homo sapiens and Neanderthals used fire for culinary purposes only 170,000 years ago, the new study pushes that date back to around 780,000 years ago.
The researchers arrived at this conclusion after examining a site called Gesher Benot Ya'aqov located in northern Israel near the banks of the Jordan River, where a large number of fish fossils was found.
In one area of the site, which contained evidence of it being used as a fireplace, researchers discovered a large number of fish teeth but few fish bones.
Further examination of the found fish teeth revealed that they were subjected to temperature between 250 and 500 degrees Celsius. This discovery, coupled with the fact that fish bones tend to soften and disintegrate under such temperatures (which may explain the lack of these bones at the site) suggests that the fish was cooked, the researchers postulate.
"It was like facing a puzzle, with more and more information until we could make a story about human evolution," Irit Zohar, archaeologist at Tel Aviv University's Steinhardt Museum of Natural History and first author of the study, told the media.
While it wasn’t clear exactly how the human ancestors who used the Gesher Benot Ya'aqov site in the past cooked their fish, the researchers believe those ancient people used earthen ovens that were built next to the fire.