Evidence that human ancestors used fire one million years ago | Hacker News Reader

Evidence that human ancestors used fire one million years ago

sciencedaily.com

45 pointsJ3L240420 comments

I suppose it is possible that the "control of fire" was discovered and forgotten many times in the history of human kind.

There have been many things like this in human history. (See: The English learning how to cure scurvy, and then forgetting it.)

This means fire was used before homo sapiens existed, fascinating. We might have evolved to eat cooked/roasted food.

Rather, we became our big brained selves because our progenitors cooked their food.

Not even just the food I think fire was used to stay warm on cold days, a huge advantage, and was used far before food was cooked.

Nothing drains like being cold and having the ability to make fire would be a massive change.

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."

Which is in the antecedent comment.

I guess what I missed in my post (deliberately) was tying this diet to weight loss. To lose weight, simply put, you take in fewer calories than you burn to stay alive. That's the gist of why my coworkers do it. If they get 1400 calories usefully extracted from their diet but they need 2000, they lose 600 calories every day, 600 calories which the body then makes up by burning fat. Even if they could extract 2500 just from cooking the food.

The human body is incredibly designed to not die if you don't eat anything. Basically, you have to not eat anything PLUS not have any useful fat left to burn PLUS not have any extra muscle to burn. Almost everyone in the Western world could go a month without eating and only suffer from lethargy and possibly a lack of non-fat-soluble vitamins. Eat nothing but take a multivitamin and you're theoretically good to go for months. There was the study published on one man who fasted for a full year and suffered no health detriment.

I tried to dodge that direct statement in my original post because I am not a health professional, I know nothing of the science behind the diet, and I'm not trying to make the argument that the diet would be a "good" way to lose weight.

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.

http://hulu.com/watch/289122/fat-sick-and-nearly-dead (Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead)(2011)

http://JoinTheReboot.com

Discover Magazine had a recent article about just this:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2011/12/08/why-calori...

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.

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.

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.

I drew a Cosmic Calendar, inspired by Carl Sagan's idea.

http://i.imgur.com/h6vYI.jpg

Looks like the time-line for fire needs to change. ;-)

In case anyone would like it at a higher resolution, or cares to add their own interesting events, the source SVG file is in the public domain:

http://www.mediafire.com/?h57lwc1c7poesw0

If non-Homo Sapiens like Neanderthals and the more primitive Homo-Erectus learned how to control fire, I am beginning to wonder if Homo Sapiens actually figured it out on their own given the fact that there is now mounting evidence that we co-existed with a handful of these early hominids for several millennia.

It is worth pointing out that controlling and maintaining fire is distinct from knowledge of techniques to build fire ex nihilo. There are still groups that lack that technology.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_people

And fire past sunset must have been a huge boost to socialization and safety of the tribe.

Or dating methods are all messed up. :)

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