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You are here: Home / Firsts / When Was Food First Cooked?

When Was Food First Cooked?

June 29, 2020 by Karen Hill

For millions of years, humans ate the fish and meat they hunted and fruits and vegetables they grew in their natural state, raw.

Gradually, they learned to improve the taste of food, to keep it from spoiling, and to make it useful in more ways by cooking it, drying it for later use, or milling and grinding it.

It is impossible to date these discoveries, as the methods of cooking and drying evolved over a period of time. But it is believed that prehistoric people first cooked their food by about 500,000 B.C.

Although these humans did not know how to make their own fires, they probably took burning branches from fires started by lightning or volcanic eruptions.

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Filed Under: Firsts

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

Previous Post: « Were Humans Hunters or Farmers First?
Next Post: When Did People First Begin To Separate into Families? »

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