Discovery of fire a little earlier than previously thought?

[TylerDurden]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2871232/Did-humans-master-fire-Israel-350-000-years-ago-Burnt-flints-cave-near-Haifa-earliest-evidence-fire-use.html


I wish they had not posted all that Wrangham-oriented nonsense which claims that we would have had to spend 48% of our time eating in order to get enough nutrients each day.

[TylerDurden]

Still, the article does claim that almost-universal cooking only happened from c.125,000 years ago, with initial discovery  supposedly occurring c.350,000 years ago.

[van]

I don't know, that does seem like enough time to adapt to cooked molecules.   For I remember in just one summer in India,   I was able to adapt to  their hot dishes. 

[ciervo-chaman]

we don't know nothing.. the more time it passes the more clear to me that we can't know anything based on "external" science. we can just use the "internal" science (that is , verifying with our experiences anything we want to probe)

eating a summer squash vaporized for 3-5 minutes is not going to kill you, and you even will digest it really quickly. Is that being adapted to cooked?

maybe we are "adapted" (what is to be adapted?) to cooking, but not 100% cooked foods! (again, whats the goal here? to live long, to live healthy, to enjoy the more varieties of flavors, to create new ones?, alltogheter? what is the goal of adaptation? to make us what? to reproduce? to live long lifes? to live healthy? to conquer the universe? )

maybe our body has "evolved" now to be on a 90% raw and 10% cooked (given the times we have had to adapt to cooked, and that our ancestors HAD been eating cooked) maybe definition of "paleo" is something around 80-100% raw and 0-20% cooked (depending on your bloodline)...

personally i think that as soon as the human discovered fire, and how to control and mantain it, he started to experiment as much as he can with it. due to it being a so new thing, adding a totally new dimension to the reallity they were living. allowing them to create new things, and playing new games on the reallity.

science says it is 300.000 years ago or 150.000 or anything. but these are just speculations on some evidence found. what if the evidence from 500.000 years and before is all gone , for reasons we still don't understand/know?

and maybe the human and the fire are 2 things that were always together and come in the same package hehe

i don't know just leting my mind run and say stupid things =)

[TylerDurden]

I don't know, that does seem like enough time to adapt to cooked molecules.   For I remember in just one summer in India,   I was able to adapt to  their hot dishes. 

For Mankind  to be able to adapt to cooked foods fully, one would have to prove that a) most cooked foods were better digested than most raw foods (barring grains, perhaps),  b) that we had all become somehow immune to the effects of heat-created toxins derived from cooking, and c) that we had somehow become better able to absorb or produce the various nutrient-levels destroyed by cooking. No solid evidence, however, exists for any of these points. Indeed, vast numbers of scientific studies confirm that humans are very much harmed by heat-created toxins derived from cooking.

[JeuneKoq]

I don't know, that does seem like enough time to adapt to cooked molecules.   For I remember in just one summer in India,   I was able to adapt to  their hot dishes. 

Same here, got accustomed to (and not adapted to) very spicy food, thanks to my Malaysian friend's cooking skill and heritage. However such spices work the same way as caffeine in coffee, and other similar "drugs": first your taste/body find it repulsively hot or bitter etc, then after repetitive ingestion of the product your organism starts to tolerate it and progressively gets accustomed to the stuff, until actually getting addicted to it.

[nummi]

Isn't it funny how the time the "invention" of fire and cooking supposedly began, 300 000 to 500 000 years ago, is the exact same time supposedly there was an interplanetary/galactic war after which "light" lost and "dark" won. And the resulting disconnection/redesign of us from our true potential/abilities - "multidimensional" existence - to just mere survival and procreation in the physical world and thus simple slaves. On top of this the fact that we have tens and tens of senses we "seemingly" have no use for and never have had, yet they exist in us as if there is, or has been, a use for... Why would or even could all these receptors/senses exist if there has "seemingly" never been a reason for them to develop in the first place - a reason that can only be "multidimensional" existence.

Considering the above, what would it say about the discovery of fire... and from that cooking. As the discovery of fire on its own, without cooking attached to it, is nothing special. And considering the fact that no unmanipulated animal - that we once were - would choose cooked food over raw, ever (though there are scenarios... and they do include severe suffering and pain for countless generations, like a test; the end-goal being growth - which itself is only positive).

The likeliest scenario is that fire was (re)taught to us, as was introduced cooking, after we were (re)designed to lose ourselves. Because of its severe effect to our health and the resulting damaged health's effect of keeping us in a small box. Body can't grow or heal well if there's some constant negative effect from something or from somewhere, and the effect will extend to mental and emotional levels and whatever other levels.

[PaleoPhil]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2871232/Did-humans-master-fire-Israel-350-000-years-ago-Burnt-flints-cave-near-Haifa-earliest-evidence-fire-use.html

I wish they had not posted all that Wrangham-oriented nonsense which claims that we would have had to spend 48% of our time eating in order to get enough nutrients each day.

The study cited was not just "Wrangham-oriented," it was one of the studies that he personally worked on:
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/08/the-efficient-caveman-cook Thought you might like to be warned about that, given your very low opinion of him.

[TylerDurden]

The study cited was not just "Wrangham-oriented," it was one of the studies that he personally worked on:
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/08/the-efficient-caveman-cook Thought you might like to be warned about that, given your very low opinion of him.

Thanks. I should have known. Only he could deliberately use confirmation bias to totally falsify stastistics to state whatever he claims. He was unable to find any genuine palaeoarchaeological data to support his claims so had to grasp at straws. I also dislike how he uses his faked scientific data to deliberately support his pro-feminist and pro-vegetarian views.

Right,  I'll check with allexperts.com re the chimpanzees'  time spent on eating per day. I'm sure it's false. Or perhaps you know of a chimpanzee expert? Hmm, maybe I could ask my older brother if the allexperts people do not come across? Until recently, he had a safari camp near a scientific chimp observation station.

Or perhaps someone here could locate Wrangham's e-mail address and politely inform him how absurd his claims are re raw foodists spending half their time eating each day?