On Mon, 21 Jun 1999, Hans Kylberg wrote:

> At 16:16 1999-06-20 -0700, Katie wrote:
> >Somebody want to remind me how long
> >humans, or pre-humans are thought to have had fire?
>
> If I remember right it is something very long ago, like a million or more
> years, but the first _evidence_ of use for cooking is juast 30000 years ago.

What evidence would one look for, if early cooking amounted to
roasting meat or a potato on a stick?  Or heating rocks and then
burying them with the food to be baked, as I learned to do in Boy
Scouts?  What we have 30,000 years ago is the first evidence of
cooking vessels, but I see no reason to doubt that cooking itself
was around much longer than that.

Todd Moody
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