Re: How did prehistoric humans make the jump to eating only cooked meat?

David, The cooking of meat could not take place (at least on any regular basis) until hominids harnessed the use of fire. The earliest evidence of the regular use of fire is between 500,000 and 700,000 years ago. During this period we have in Asia the first evidence of the use by "Homo erectus" of fire and cooking. The reason why these hominids started eating cooked meat is somewhat speculative. However, one possible explanation is that in the long and cold winters in northern Europe and Asia food was hard to find. The plant foods were not there and the heard animals migrated out of the range of these hominids. Perhaps they solved this challenge of their northern climate by finding the corpses of frozen animals that had died in the late fall and then thawing the meat over fire. It may be that this gave rise to the idea of cooking the meat. At any rate, once this was achieved people were more secure in their northerly environment. Dr. Smerken