On Sun, 20 Jun 1999, Katie Bretsch wrote:

> Somebody want to remind me how long
> humans, or pre-humans are thought to have had fire?

According to my Grolier's encyclopedia, traces of hearths as old
as 700,000 years ago have been discovered in L'Escale, France.
The author of the article is Donald Johanson, who is a well-known
archeologist.

> While I am ready personally to believe that wine and cheese were in the
> diet in a minor way for a long time before the dominance of organized
> agriculture,  I do doubt that foods like wine and cheese made up any
> _large_ portion of the diet for most individuals, anciently.

That seems reasonable.  We do have a unique metabolic pathway for
metabolizing alcohol.

> To go off on a vaguely related tangent,  I just read somewhere that those
> in a position to pronounce on such matters have now acknowledged that
> chimps have "culture" in the academic meaning of the term.

Bees, too.  The "dance" that bees use to communicate the location
of a food source is a learned code, if I remember Frisch's work
right.

Todd Moody
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