Early humans began smoking millions of years ago

Early humans began using fire to smoke and preserve meat a million years ago, rather than mainly used for cooking, but to prevent elephants and hippos from rotting their bodies and preventing them from hungry predators.

New research at Tel Aviv University challenges widely accepted “culinary assumptions” and shows that our ancestors were refined food protectionists before becoming regular chefs. The study shows that an elephant contains enough calories to feed 20-30 people in more than a month, making meat preservation a vital survival technique.

A million calories problem

What should you do when your hunting party brings 10 tons of elephants? For early humans, this brought both an incredible opportunity and a logistical nightmare.

“For example, an elephant’s meat and fat contains millions of calories, enough to feed 20-30 people for a month or more,” explained Dr. Miki Ben-Dor from Tel Aviv University’s Department of Archaeology. “So a hunted elephant or hippo is a real treasure – a ‘repository’ of meat and fat that needs to be protected and preserved for many days because it is not only coveted by predators and bacteria.””

Researchers have studied nine archaeological sites around the world, dating back 1.8 million years ago, where evidence of early firefighting was found. Each part has a large number of large animals’ bones, such as hippos, rhinos and other giants that dominate prehistoric landscapes.

Energy economics drives innovation

The team used data from modern hunters-gathering society to calculate that hunting large prey produces 16,000 calories per hour, which is ten times the rate of return on collecting plants. This huge energy difference explains why early humans specifically deleted the largest animals they could find.

But there is a catch. Unlike smaller prey that can be consumed quickly, Megafauna presented what researchers called the “storage challenge” to early humans. A hippo weighing 1.5 tons contains about 1 million calories and can last 25 people for 22 days. If they can prevent spoilage and protect it from the scavenger, it will be fresh meat for nearly a month.

Burning as food technology

Breakthrough insights come from the recognition that fires offered our ancestors a dual purpose:

save: Smoking and dry meat extends its edible lifespan far beyond original storage

Protect: Flames and smoke stop predators and scavengers who are attracted by the massive body of corpses

“The fire brought two crucial purposes to early humans, first to avoid other predators and treasure hunters seeking to seize the “treasure”, second, second to preserve the meat by smoking and drying, preventing spoilage and allowing it to be consumed for a long time,” he collaborated on the study.

This is a fundamentally different view of early use, rather than the general “culinary assumption”, which suggests that humans began to use fire to cook food and aid digestion.

Reconsider the cooking assumption

While cooking certainly brings benefits – energy benefits are more modest compared to preservation and conservation benefits. The researchers calculated that cooking meat increased digestibility by only about 8%, adding about 1,200 calories per hour.

More importantly, the energy costs of collecting fuel and maintaining fires often outweigh the caloric benefits of cooking, especially for plant foods. This economic reality shows that early humans had more urgent reasons for investing in firefighting technology.

The study also reveals key details missing from previous studies: Fires used for preservation and protection will burn much longer than the fires of simple cooking, making them more likely to leave hundreds of thousands of years of archaeological traces.

Living among giants and predators

Early humans faced a very different world from modern hunter-gatherers. A large number of herbivores roamed a large number of elephants, weighing 10 tons, hippos, rhinos and other giant elephants, dwarfing the largest terrestrial animals today.

But this bounty brings serious risks. With just 60-70 kg upright, HOMO has to defend its precious food cache from powerful competitors including Cave Lions, Hyenas and other large predators, who can easily exaggerate the human population easily.

The researchers believe that this ongoing threat could have transitioned early humans from sleeping in trees to ground near fires, a major behavioral shift that requires courage and technological innovation.

Rethinking human evolution

The meaning goes far beyond the ancient firefighting. The study proposes that specializing in hunting large prey rather than cooking is the main driver of key evolutionary changes in HOMO ERECTUS.

“In this study, we propose a new understanding of the factors that inspired early humans to start using fire: the need to protect large hunting animals from other predators and retain large amounts of meat over time,” concluded Professor Barka. “Once a fire occurs for these purposes, it is occasionally used for cooking, with zero edge energy costs.”

This remark suggests that our ancestors were mature resource managers who developed sophisticated technologies not only to make food taste better, but also to maximize risky, high-risk hunting actions.

Modern courses of ancient innovation

This study shows how environmental pressures drive technological innovation. Early humans faced the challenge of managing huge food surprises in dangerous worlds and invented solutions to become fundamental human technology.

As large archipelagos begin to disappear due to climate change and hunting pressures, the demand for mass preservation has decreased. Humans adapted by hunting smaller prey and eventually developing agriculture, but in the age of giants, cognitive and cultural foundations shape the trajectory of our species.

This study reminds us that human technological development usually emerges from actual necessities rather than abstract desire for improvement. Our ancestors’ success in managing large amounts of food resources may provide cognitive challenges and caloric surplus for dramatic brain growth traits that support human evolution.