Chef Life: Pleistocene Edition

Hungry yet? More than half a million years have been added to the timeline for our capacity to cook.

Analysis of fish tooth enamel by a team of transdisciplinary researchers shows that cooks have been killing it in the fire pit for roughly 780,000 years now. Previously, the earliest evidence of humans cooking food was dated to around 170,000 years ago.

The study shows that the technical competence required to control fire effectively enough to cook a meal also demonstrates an understanding of the benefits of eating cooked food over raw. This pushes the possible timeline for Iron Chef: Pleistocene Edition back to almost one million years ago and is a massive leap in our understanding of human development and evolution over deep time.

As an avid chef who derives a ridiculous amount of pleasure from catching and cooking a fish over a fire this feels unsurprising at a genetic level, like, I can feel this fish history in my bones somehow.

As an anthropologist, I have an intense curiosity about archaeo-recipes and the ancient culinary landscapes of our people and wonder about the types of data that might inform technique and ingredients in the reconstruction of a 700,000 year old recipe for a fish bake, an ice age sole meuniere, say.

Hungry for more?

Cuneiform Cookbooks? Yes, we have those.

Archaeo-culinary curious? Try your hand at the World’s Oldest Known Recipes