When Did Humans Learn To Boil?
The control of fire and the beginning of cooking were important developments in the evolution of human foodways. The cooking techniques available to our ancestors for much of the Pleistocene would have been limited to simple heating and roasting. The next significant change in culinary technology came much later, when humans learned to wet-cook (i.e., “boil,” sensu lato), a suite of techniques that greatly increased the digestibility and nutritional worth of foods. Most archaeologists assume that boiling in perishable containers cannot pre-date the appearance of fire-cracked rock (FCR), thus placing its origin within the Upper Paleolithic (UP) and linking it to a long list of innovations thought to have been introduced by behaviorally modern humans. This paper has two principal goals. The first is to alert archaeologists and others to the fact that one can easily and effectively boil in perishable containers made of bark, hide, leaves, even paper and plastic, placed directly on the fire and without using heated stones. Thus, wet-cooking very likely pre-dates the advent of stone-boiling, the latter probably representing the intensification of an already existing technology. The second goal is to suggest that foragers might have begun stone-boiling if they had to increase the volume of foods cooked each day, for example in response to larger average commensal-unit sizes. Enlarged hide and bark containers are inherently flimsy, and at some point it would have become necessary to support them in a pit. Moreover, since hides shrink when filled with water and heated, stone-boiling, by removing the container from direct contact with flames, may have extended its use-life, thereby freeing up valuable hides for other purposes such as clothing and shelter. To date, the evidence that is available for wet-cooking prior to the UP remains limited and largely circumstantial. Birch tar mastic found on several Middle Paleolithic (MP) stone tools shows that Neanderthals already by the late Middle Pleistocene were using birch bark, an ideal material for making cooking vessels. And they had ample access to hides and paunches, both of which also make serviceable containers. The best evidence at present for pre-UP wet-cooking are starch grains extracted from dental calculus of a Shanidar Neanderthal. These grains are distorted in a manner that is suggestive of cooking in the presence of moisture. Obviously, this evidence doesn’t prove that Neanderthals, or earlier hominins, were in fact wet-cooking but, given the simplicity of the technology and the wide availability of suitable container materials, it seems highly likely. Scholars interested in the evolution of human diet and culinary technology need to be aware of this likelihood, and begin to focus their collective efforts on finding innovative ways to “see” wet-cooking in the Paleolithic record.
