> F : Burger ever spoke of about 400000 ans in his seminars, and it is also
> >writen in his book ( I lend it to a friend, so I'm unable to check right
> >now).
>
JL : I clearly remember that he mentioned 10,000 years in his book.

F : Yes, it is mentionned for the beginning of widespread use of cooking.
And on page 135  of  "La Guerre du Cru", second edition, it is  mentioned
400,000 years as the
approximate date of the fire's first mastery. If I remember well, the 1st
edition of the book said the same and the 3th one ("Manger Vrai") too. See
below the exact words of GCB - I translated the 2 most important phrases in
my opinion.

JL : Whatever, even if fully modern humans (120,000 years) are more recent
than
> the widespread use of cooking (100,000-400,000 years?), it does not prove
> that cooking is OK... and it does not mean it is not either. This is an
> endless debate.

F : Maybe. One way to get out of an endless theoretical debate is to
experiment. By the way, here we come to one of the main points of Burger's
theory: If we have no
prove (...that  a kid can swim, we'd better not throw him into deep water)
that cooking is safe, we d' better not cook.(better not to throw the kid
into deep water, even if it is possible that he can swim.)
The experiment with cooking last since some hundreds thousand  years and has
very quickly
instigated drastic changes on our planet (countless kids drowned).
Raw-fooders and Instinctos are
setting a counter-experiment (not a so dangerous one!).

 > >F > 450 000 years ago appeared the first known human disease, "pyorrhee
> >> > alveolaire"(in French), followed by malaria, "meningiome", syphilis
and
> >> > then "actinomycose" 35000 years ago.

JL : I suppose many diseases do not leave marks in skeletal remains. How can
you
> be sure that humans didn't have flus 2000000 years ago? :-)

F : "The first KNOWN human diasese" means there could have been some unknown
ones.
As for flu, I'm not absolutely sure, but it is highly probable there was
none
2 millions years ago. No wild animal living in its original environnment is
known to have flu. When I ate cooked food (near SWD) I had very often severe
flu. Now allmost never.

> >F : You are wildly conjuncturing. I did read on BV website that cooked
meat
> >rot while raw meat gets gamy.

JL : I suppose that cooked meat is safe (with respect to germs) if eaten
> just
> after cooking and that raw meat is safe if preserved in proper conditions
> (of temperature, humidity...)

F : Germs (bacterias, not trich !) are welcome to "instinctos" digestive
tracks.

Francois

"Une des plus belles erreurs commises par les archeologues concerne
l'origine meme de la cuisine. Ayant decouvert des os d'animaux dans des
sites tres anciens, ils ont aussitot decrete que les hommes de l'epoque
cuisaient leur nourriture, presumant qu'ils ne pouvaient de toute évidence
pas manger leur viande a l'etat cru...

Certains de ces os portant des traces noiratres, on pensa logiquement qu'ils
etaient passes au barbecue. Pendant des decennies, on en resta a l'idee que
la cuisson s'était installee dans les moeurs depuis l'origine du feu.

Il s'avera malheureusement apres examen plus approfondi que ces traces
noires n'etaient que des depots de manganese. D'ou l'on conclut que l'homme
n'avait pas cuit jusqu'au neolithique. Ainsi la cuisine n'avait que 10 000
ans. On ne pouvait en tout cas pas descendre plus bas, les sites datant de
cette dernière periode comportant presque tous des reliques indéniablement
culinaires - fours a pain, fours polynesiens, recipients en terre cuite puis
en metal...

-Si je comprends bien, on ne sait pas grand-chose sur les premices de l'art
culinaire entre 400 000 ans et 10 000 ans en arriere.
(..., we don't know much about the beginning of the culinary art BETWEEN
400,000 YEARS AND 10,000 YEARS AGO )

C'est aussi fumeux qu'une cuisine a la Chandeleur. Les hommes avaient le
feu, mais de la a savoir s'ils l'utilisaient pour preparer leur
nourriture... Rien de scientifique ne permet de trancher pour le moment.

- Et quelles sont vos intuitions personnelles à ce sujet ? Il parait que
l'instinct developpe le sixième sens...

J'ai l'impression que les hommes, curieux comme nous nous connaissons, ont
du faire des experiences de cuisson depuis fort longtemps. Observez la
curiosite des enfhnts quand ils jouent avec la flamme d'une bougie. lis y
passent automatiquement toutes sortes d'objets pour observer l'effet de ce
petit morceau de soleil qu'ils ont l'impression de dominer...
( I am under the impression that humans, inquisitive as they are, would have
MADE COOKING EXPERIMENTS SINCE LONG AGO.)

- Vous semblez bien poetique pour parler d'un element que vous chargez de
tous les maux...

Je n'ai rien contre le feu, pas plus que contre la dynamite ou
l'electricite. Tout dépend de l'usage que l'on en fait."

(Extracts of GCB, "La guerre du Cru")