Re: Fire, Food and Fish - Homo erectus didn't need fire to cook

From: Rich Travsky (traRvEsky_at_hotMOVEmail.com)
Date: 09/27/04 

Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 23:42:31 -0600

Algis Kuliukas wrote:
>
> 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.

Then why, as we know from the Gona site at 2.5mya, were hominids going
to so much trouble to process game?

Just came across this:

 http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20031117/kitchen.html
 Nov. 21, 2003
 ...
 Researchers could link only one of the bones to a specific animal species.
 It is an anklebone from an equid, a mammal belonging to a family that
 includes horses, asses, zebras, and extinct related animals.
 ...

That's at 2.5 mya. It didn't just start overnight.

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