Wrangham's pro-cooking claims proven to be dead wrong

[TylerDurden]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4036134/Europe-s-earliest-humans-raw-foodies-1-2-million-year-old-teeth-suggest-ancestors-didn-t-use-fire.html

Disappointingly, the article, while admitting that Wrangham/Wrongham's 1.8-million-year-claim for the advent of cooking tries to claim that c.800,000 years ago was the new timeline for cooking, but, of course, evidence thereof is very fleeting, with  all the solid evidence for cooking occurring c.300,000  to 400,000 years ago. Still, even if the war isn't won yet, one battle has been won at least.

[surfsteve]

 I was always taught in school that the first cooking was from eating meat that had been killed in forest fires.

[TylerDurden]

I was always taught in school that the first cooking was from eating meat that had been killed in forest fires.

Meaningless as wild animals did the same, I am sure on rare occasions. I doubt that early man had constant, frequent forest fires and therefore regular access to cooked meats in those days. A more convincing explanation is that Mankidn experimented first with hallucinogenic plants and then discovered that cooked foods contained addictive opioids which affected the brain, thus causing them to eat more cooked foods.

[Iguana]

Interesting point. Yes, hominids and animals ate food grilled in forest fires, on volcanic lava or overheated on stones in the sun, on rare occasions.

According to GCB's theory, that is why our bodies have some means to expel the toxins produced by heat, aka detoxination, by viral or bacterial illnesses. These processes have been adapted during millions of years of evolution to be suited for such occasional circumstances and they tend to runaway out of control, causing these illnesses to become dangerous when we continue to repeatedly eat cooked food several times a day, everyday.

It's probably the same with milk.