As my enjoyment of raw meat and animal fat increased and I read the posts of
other raw meat and fat eaters and saw that they come to prefer raw meat to
cooked, it gradually occurred to me that Paleolithic peoples probably
started cooking more as a method of food preservation than for taste, which
others have hypothesized as well. Taste preference is commonly assumed
(without evidence) by cooked-food-eating "scientists" to be the main reason. 

Pemmican is one of the healthiest and most satisfactory of the partially
cooked foods, yet I only find reference to it going back 7000 years. Does
anyone have earlier dates?