I have been reading book on history of human evolution. Only around 6 lac years back modern humans separated out from Chimpanzees.We share 98% of our DNA with Chimpanzees.The early humans who migrated out of African were hunter gatherers. We survived by eating roots, fruits and scavenging the left over meat from kill of other animals.We started agriculture only 10000 years back.Present humans known as Homo Sapiens have been in existence for almost 2 lac years. What separates humans from other animals is our intelligence and cognitive skills.
Human intelligence suddenly started developing around 70000-30000 years back. Bible would correlate this to the event of Adam and Eve eating fruit of Apple tree and started understanding difference between good and bad.We call it as tree of knowledge.It is not very clear what triggered sudden development of cognitive skills in humans. One theory is humans learning to create and control fire triggered the development of intelligence. Food cooked on fire helped us to digest food better and eat variety of things.Lesser consumption of energy for digestion meant more energy was available for our brain development. Today 25% energy in our body is used by our brain which is very high compared to other animals.This triggered the evolution of modern humans who have colonized earth.
Today I tried to recreate roasting a Colocasia the way our hunter gatherer ancestors would do it. I did it on a gas burner. This is how people ate roots some decades back. It is also exciting to know that this process of cooking food on fire is what makes modern humans different from other animals.
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