Fish remains discovered by Israeli scientists at the Gesher Benot Yaakov archaeological site in northern Israel appear to show that humans were cooking their food much earlier than previously estimated.
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Until now, the earliest evidence of cooking is claimed to date back about 170,000 years. However, these findings – published in Nature Ecology and Evolution – indicate that the practice is much older, dating back as far as 780,000 years.
"This study demonstrates the huge importance of fish in the life of prehistoric humans, for their diet and economic stability," one of the researchers, Dr. Irit Zohar said. "Further, by studying the fish remains found at Gesher Benot Yaakov we were able to reconstruct, for the first time, the fish population of the ancient Hula Lake and to show that the lake held fish species that became extinct over time."
Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv University and Bar-Ilan University collaborated with the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, Oranim Academic College, the Israel Oceanographic and Limnological Research institution, the Natural History Museum in London and the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz on the research that produced this new theory.
Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.
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