Not fallacious at all, at least from the facts you offer. Wikepedia cites a date of around 100,000 years ago as when Homo sapiens began migrating from Africa. The only date I was able to find for when Homo neanderthalensis began cooking was about 50,000 years ago, which may well have been long after H. sapiens began living with him in Europe. It seems reasonable to me that H. neanderthalensis most likely learned to cook from H. sapiens. As for why H. neanderthalensis went extinct despite cooking, perhaps by the time he learned to do it he was already on the decline in Europe and wasn't able to become competitive against H. sapiens, even though both species now had more calories available.
Where do you get 105,000 years as the earliest point at which humans began cooking? I remember a far broader range from the "Origins of cooking" paper. Anyway, that's still early enough that it began in Africa, and then could migrate over the world with the spread of H. sapiens.
The 105,000 years ago date I gave was specifically for non-palaeo foods(ie grains - there was a recent study I showed on rawpaleoforum which claimed palaeo man ate a few grains as far as 105,000 years ago).
As for cooking PALAEO foods, that happened c.250,000 years ago and evidence thereof exist throughout the world, so it is extremely unlikely that the Neanderthals ever learnt cooking from homo sapiens. I'm afraid there is this outdated notion that the Neanderthals were simple, grunting brutes by comparison to humans, yet actually there is plenty of evidence to show that they were highly intelligent, able to talk and had an interesting culture.
In short, the explanation re cooked foods being addictive re opioids seems far more compelling.
Topic: Evolutionary benefits of cooking? (Read 16142 times)