Re: Fire, Food and Fish - Homo erectus didn't need fire to cook
From: Algis Kuliukas (algis_at_RiverApes.com)
Date: 09/27/04
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Date: 26 Sep 2004 20:59:41 -0700
richardparker01@yahoo.com (richard01) wrote in message news:<6e30eb22.0409230515.4c719691@posting.google.com>...
> and nor did anybody until they started moving into cold dry climates
> inland.
>
> Matt Ridley, in 'Nature via Nurture' quotes Richard Wrangham's theory
> that the human pair bond derived from cooking.
> - Fire - suggestive evidence 1.6Mya (and every archaeologist
> desperately looks for it).
> - Human teeth (erectus) started growing smaller 1.9 MYa
> - Female body size grew larger at same time (or men got smaller)
> - 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).
>
> (Both these gentlemen are English. We are notorious for being dead
> ignorant about food).
>
> 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. 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.
>
> They 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.
>
> Very similar, indeed, to:
>
> Japanese sushi
> Mexican ceviche
> Irish oysters with lemon & Tabasco plus the essential 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 was 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
>
> Richard
Thanks for an excellent post, Richard.
I have thought for years that the idea that dental reduction was
associated with actually increased meat eating (but in the context of
cooking) was a little, shall we say, odd.
The expensive tissue hypothesis of Aiello & Wheeler (which argues that
encephalisation occurred through a positive feedback loop of higher
energy foods requiring more intlligence to obtain it) makes much more
sense in the context of obtaining fish and is consistent with the
observed dental reduction and has the added benefit, as you point out,
of not requiring cooking technology.
Algis Kuliukas
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