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Message: <blockquote data-quote="phoenix" data-source="post: 103978" data-attributes="member: 12578">Hana quite possible at least  20000 BP  so in the paleolithic era :<a href="http://anthropology.si.edu/archaeobio/Ohalo%20II%20Nature.pdf" target="_blank">http://anthropology.si.edu/archaeobio/Ohalo II Nature.pdf</a>perhaps you should read Richard Wranghams book Catch the Fire, How cooking made us Human. He believes cooking started very early and was the reason for our evolutionary success.   Heres the my take on the  scenario. One day,  somewhere between 2.3 and 1.8 million years ago a wandering  homo habilis found a still smouldering forest fire. S/He  was hungry but there was very little left to scavange, even the leaves, grasses and berries were gone. She scrabbled around, and found a burnt tuber, Wow the first baked potato! Not only was it delicious but it gave far more energy than the raw food. A good reason for repeating the experiment.. A bit (maybe a lot later)they learnt to create and or preserve fire.   (sparks caused  during tool making is one possibility). Not only  cooking but keeping warm could be done at will. It was also possible to live on the ground more safely, as fire would help ward off predators.Of course its a newish theory and  the evidence for anything from that era is sparse but it is certainly an interesting and read  (there is an earlier paper, cooking as a biological trait that you can find, I can't link to it) Apart from teeth the use of tools for pounding, grinding was probably very early even chimpanzees and great apes use tools for pounding food, (and it just occured to me that even thrushes use tools for food preparation)</blockquote>

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