Before Wisdom

The ladies over at Jezebel said what I did in Cooked Meals For A Million Years?, but in a much more satisfying way:

Anthropologists have uncovered “unambiguous evidence” in South Africa that our Homo erectus grandpas were cooking their food as far back as one million years ago. Previous to this discovery, the earliest conclusive evidence of deliberate, human-controlled fires dated back only about 400,000 years. Now, I know what you’re thinking: How do I know it wasn’t just spontaneously-combusted bat guano?

Don’t worry, they covered that.

snip …

On principle, I 100% do not care what anyone else eats. But I do care about judgmental condescension shrouded in pseudo-science—the idea that certain behaviors are “healthier” or “more natural” because “that’s how the cavemen did it.” That’s some bullshit that you hear all the time, from raw- and/or paleo-foodists and those barefoot people and the strident anti-monogamists. And I really honestly don’t give a shit what any of those groups want to eat/wear/fuck, but can we just PLEASE leave the “cavemen” out of it?

Full article.

A new study was published in the news citing evidence that Homo Erectus may have been using fire and cooking food as early as 1 million years ago.

That would mean people were eating cooked meals before people were people ( Homo Sapiens ).

Outside of scientific circles this may only be significant to raw foodists, many of whom justify eating only raw foods on the belief that it is the diet human beings evolved on and what we are adapted to.