>
> If we are talking about paleolithic humans,
> there seems to be an idea that eating raw beef
> is more "paleo" than eating cooked beef (substitute bison here if your want)
> when the opposite is more true.
>
> We know about the cooking pits of the Clovis people here in North
> America 10,000 BP and in general the role of cooking even with
> hominid species that predated ours.

I wonder. I have no strong opinions either way. I think that cooking
developed as a way to extract more nutricion from animals. For
example, boiling bones gets out lots of fat that no other carnivore
can get all of. We know they have been cooking for a very long time,
but how much of the total we have no way to determine. I suspect a lot
was eaten raw, but there is no way to know. Raw meat is so tender and
easy to eat compared to cooked (unless it is boiled or baked a long
time).

One small fact tends me to the opinion that cooking has been common
since our species developed, and that is that all peoples I know of
(one exception, the Andaman islanders did not use fire) eat most of
their meat cooked now. The Japanese certainly eat a lot of raw foods
that other peoples eat cooked, but they are considered unusual anyway.
Since virtually every society eats mostly cooked meat, I feel it must
go back a long long way.

The taste of cooked verses raw is not a factor to consider. All
peoples generally prefer the food they grew up with. One example, the
Aussies love Aussie beef, that rock hard, overcooked, fat free range
cattle they eat down there. Japanese can't stand it. They like theirs
white with marbling and soft enough to cut with chopsticks. They think
prime American beef is way too hard and lean! I grew up in America and
think Aussie beef might be OK if eaten very rare, something the
average Aussie would cringe at. Japanese beef is OK too, but too fatty
textureless. The best tasting for me is prime American, what I grew up with.

So I suspect our remote ancestors ate mainly raw, but used cooking to
free resources not otherwise useable. They eventually got used to the
taste and gradually came to cook more and more of the carcass that
way. After animals were domesticated cooking became much more
important, because of the ease of transfer of parasites when species
live close together. Much less of a problem for hunters, than for
herders or farmers, so cooking gradually became more prevalent as
people became farmers more than hunters. Just my guess. I LIKE raw
meat, but I am not claiming it is any more paleo than cooked. I like
cooked too.  :--)