fire &/or coast?

From: Marc Verhaegen (fa204466_at_skynet.be)
Date: 09/24/04 

Date: Fri, 24 Sep 2004 23:54:08 +0200

> Matt Ridley, in 'Nature via Nurture' quotes Richard Wrangham's theory that
the human pair bond derived from cooking.

:-D I've seen lots of silly theories in PA, but this must be one of the
worst.

> - Fire - suggestive evidence 1.6Mya (and every archaeologist desperately
looks for it). - Human teeth (erectus) started growing smaller 1.9 MYa.

We have inactivation of myosin-16 (masticatory musculature) estimated at c 2
Ma. A possible explanation is use of fire, but much more likely IMO is the
transition to slippery foods which require less mastication & more suction
(seaside).

> - Female body size grew larger at same time (or men got smaller).

At the same time?? Unknown. What we know was that the men seem to have been
substantially bigger in ergaster (Dmanisi).

> - ie better diet, better digestion suggests cooking. - Good reason for
male & mate to stay together and guard the food. Later, when real
hunting/gathering developed, they divided their labour sexually, into male
hunters, female gatherers. This idea presupposes that the only available
food, in woodland/savannah, like game meat, tubers, roots, stems, etc needed
pre-digestion (ie cooking) before it becomes really edible. (If you like -
just try making a real meal out of a chunk of raw steak and a raw carrot or
two, using no cutlery other than a handaxe). On the sea or lake
shore, it is quite different. My Filipino neighbours eat a majority of
their fish raw (kinilao) - they merely soak it in vinegar or lemon juice,
which both 'cooks' it (coagulates some of the protein) and acts as a
disinfectant. (Any cook can tell you that you can 'revive' a 'tired' bit of
fish or meat by washing it in vinegar). And the vinegar? They get it
from tuba, the 'wine' that makes itself from tapped coconut tree sap.

Intersting. Please have a look at the coconut idea in the files.

> Freshly tapped, and fermenting naturally, it's drinkable and delightfully
intoxicating for the first day only - then it rapidly turns into vinegar.
The last of the vintage tuba of the day has to be drunk by about 6pm
(sunset, always), so binge drinking/socialising is very popular. I have,
in my mind's eye, a picture of a bunch of very drunken, merry homo erectus
telling 'Irish/Polish/***' jokes about those 'dumb a'piths'. Having just
sent their wives out to get some more oysters.

:-D

> Filipino fishermen make fish kinilao, shellfish, squid and cuttlefish
kinilao, and seaweed kinilao. They often use coconut juice and flesh as an
ingredient too, and delicious it is. And they make it, not the women.
Very similar, indeed, to: Japanese sushi Mexican ceviche Irish
oysters with lemon and Tabasco, plus (essential) a pint of Guinness
Dutch maatjes Swedish gravadlax - all of which are, nowadays, quite
expensive dishes. Before they had rice, they only had coconut (1001
different recipes) growing wild, but quite edible raw. Taro and yams, and
perhaps other wild roots and tubers, could have been eaten raw. Exactly
the same kind of fish, shellfish, seaweeds, crustaceans and coconuts live
throughout the Indo-Pacific province, from South Africa via the Red Sea to
Japan, Hawaii, and Australia. Enough to suggest that 'strandlopers'-
erectus or sapiens, wouldn't be finding many new food challenges if they
kept to their familiar shorelines. As for meat, raw steak tartare (very
popular in Belgium as Filet Americain), raw Italian carpaccio, Lebanese
kibbeh nyeh (lamb) and soda nyeh (liver) are still sought-after highly
priced foods today. But meat needs pounding or mincing, and usually the
addition of mayonnaise or lemon juice. Raw liver doesn't - it's very soft -
but it goes better with lemon juice. And where would you find a
readymade supply of rounded, smooth pounding-stones - by a river, lake, or
seashore. And how many archaeologists would ever recognise a used one?
Indian pemmican and South African biltong are the same thing, raw pounded
meat - but sun-dried. You will see racks of split, flattened raw fish or
squid sun-drying in any fishing village from Madagascar to Manila. And
where would you best keep a stash of fresh fish or meat out of the sun, and
cool? In a natural fibre (such as coconut or other palm 'bark') 'bag', under
water, in a river, lake or sea, or on land, in the shade, constantly doused
with cool water, fresh or salt. So Homo erectus could forget about fire
while he's growing his teeth small before he gets recognised at about
1.9Mya, and perhaps controls fire 300,000 years later. If he's living by
a river, lake, or seashore, which almost invariably, when we find him dead,
he was, (as were his ancestors, if Lucy really was his great-great........
grandmother), he wouldn't need fire at all. For cooking, anyway. Regards

Thanks, Richard!

--Marc