When did hominins start cooking? It might be earlier than we thought

We know for certain cooking isn’t unique to our species and that it was going on 750,000 years ago. The evidence of hominins deliberately exposing their food to heat is being pushed back further all the time, finds Michael Marshall

By Michael Marshall

AT THIS time of year, as the temperatures drop, I find myself craving pies. I don’t know what unrecognised geniuses invented pastry and then had the idea to put a casserole inside it, but I owe them an unpayable debt. So let’s talk about the invention of cooking. How long have humans been deliberately exposing their food to heat to make it better?

You might remember a recent story reporting evidence that hominins were cooking carp fish in an earthen oven around 780,000 years ago in what is now Israel. Previously, the oldest unambiguous evidence of cooking …