Cooking - an intense breakthrough of evolution

New evidence shows that human ancestors started cooking about 1.9 million years ago, and this finding also explains the structure of the teeth and intestines of modern people.

The results of Harvard University's study (USA) showed that the tooth size of the erectus , the scientific name Homo erectus , was dramatically changed compared to previous ancestors. Explaining this change, expert Chris Organ hypothesized that this could only happen when people had a habit of cooking and no longer eating raw meat. Processed food is easy to chew and easy to digest. As a result, the body absorbs more calories for each meal, and the intestine does not take too much time to consume the food as before, according to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

To draw this conclusion, the experts measured the size of the teeth and body weight of four extinct families, together with modern people, chimpanzees and monkey families, thereby deducing the time that the This statue must be used to chew and swallow during meals. Accordingly, chimp takes 10 times more time to chew and eat than humans, accounting for 48% of the daily time. Modern people are championing the speed of eating in primates, because we eat cooked food.

However, the surprise is that close relatives are not inferior to how much they eat. For example, the upright family consumes only 6.1% of the time each day for energy supplementation, while the H. neanderthalensis family also takes about 7% of the time. Longer ancestors, more than 2 million years ago, such as H. habilis cost 7.2% of the time, and H. rudolfensis is 9.5%. Even so, scientists still think that cooking habits become more common during the time when people stand upright, but do not deny the possibility of using fire to handle food that may last longer than that time.

It was thanks to the extra time when there was no longer a chewing of the chewing, as well as the increased energy when the intestine absorbed more food, the evolution of modern humans was accelerated, followed by that is the evolution of language and social life, according to experts. Not to mention cooking can be a popular social activity.' Cooking is a very important social sign for people. In each culture, people spend a lot of time preparing and cooking, ' said Organ scientist. According to him, the human brain is very hungry for calories, so it is impossible to add energy to a big brain. Thus, it is not exaggerated to say that cooking has created an intense breakthrough in the evolution of mankind.