This means fire was used before homo sapiens existed, fascinating. We might have evolved to eat cooked/roasted food.
I thought a lot of the links to Richard Wrangham's research on the origins of cooking had already been widely shared on Hacker News. Here is a chronological list of a few stories on his research to show how this line of research has developed over the last decade.
I was very surprised when I saw the early dates (before the emergence of Homo sapiens as a species) for the earliest evidence of cooking. The current view is cooking actually enabled hominin evolution in the direction of smaller gut sizes and larger brain sizes, as is characteristic of Homo sapiens.
I do believe that if a human nowadays were to try to eat purely raw vegetables, their digestive system wouldn't be able to extract enough calories per day to make up for the energy used to digest and stay alive. Cooking food reduces the amount of energy required to digest, effectively increasing the caloric value of foods.
Staying warm seems so unimportant compared to doubling or tripling your effective food supply.
The raw food movement would disagree but it's a valid point. Cooking does two things, both softens food and enables chemical reactions which create useful sugars.
I'll admit I don't stay current on the latest trends in human diet, but I know some coworkers who are proponents of raw foods specifically because they are harder to digest. They say there's more fiber, more bulk, and fewer useful sugars (simple carbs being bad for you). When they eat foods raw that normally would be cooked, they're taking in fewer calories and filling up faster. As the food is broken down slowly, they are given nutrition throughout the day without eating more. This is their claim.
As I admit though, I don't know if this is the same as the dietary movement we're talking about. I don't know any amount of science in either direction.
That is the same bunch, they would refute the statement
"... if a human nowadays were to try to eat purely raw vegetables, their digestive system wouldn't be able to extract enough calories per day to make up for the energy used to digest and stay alive."
If that's the case, then why did consuming nothing but freshly-juiced fruits and vegetables (6 kale leaves, 1 cucumber, 4 celery stalks, 2 green apples, 1/2 lemon, 1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, with some variation of amounts and ingredients, taken as many times per day as required to feel full) literally save the lives of these two guys (Joe Cross and Phil Staples)? I understand that it's an infomercial for the lifestyle brand "Reboot Your Life", disguised as a documentary, but if it's for real, then the results are truly impressive. I ask because I'm seriously considering doing an all-out, 3-month fast like they supposedly did in the film. Thanks in advance for any useful info which anyone can give me about the efficacy and safety of this regimen.
But staying warm means you would require less food to supply the energy you need, being cold really drains you at least here in the winter I know I get really hungry when I am cold.
If you are warm and require less food that's less trips out to hunt and fewer chances of being injured or killed.
Maybe add onto that the cooking of food being digested better too.
I thought a lot of the links to Richard Wrangham's research on the origins of cooking had already been widely shared on Hacker News. Here is a chronological list of a few stories on his research to show how this line of research has developed over the last decade.
http://img2.tapuz.co.il/forums/1_140989346.pdf
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/06.13/01-cooking.ht...
http://evolutionaryanthropology.duke.edu/uploads/assets/Wobb...
http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/04...
http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/articles/RW%20RC%20Ev%20...
I was very surprised when I saw the early dates (before the emergence of Homo sapiens as a species) for the earliest evidence of cooking. The current view is cooking actually enabled hominin evolution in the direction of smaller gut sizes and larger brain sizes, as is characteristic of Homo sapiens.