02-Learning to Control Fire

Learning to Control Fire

Our earliest ancestors numbered a few tens of thousands at most and lived in small bands of several dozen each. At first, humans ate vegetation, which has low energy per weight. Meat has more energy per weight than vegetation and thus is a more efficient way to obtain the protein that is vital to survival. Eventually our ancestors figured out that when they ate meat they spent less time and energy finding food.  At first they killed animals and ate their flesh raw, but they found that the meat of animals killed in and cooked by wildfires was easier to digest, and thus its protein could be utilized more easily.

At first they intentionally set wild fires to kill and cook animals but that was inefficient. So they learned to control fire and to hunt. On vast, expansive grasslands hunters on foot would run animals down and kill them. They would station themselves at different locations and trade off running after an animal until it was totally exhausted. Then they would return to their campsite where a fire was always burning, and cook and eat their kill.  

Thus through learning to control the use of fire, humans insured themselves a steady diet of vital, dense, meat protein. That high energy diet then caused the human brain to increase in size from 400 – 500 cubic centimeters to 1,500 – 1,700 cubic centimeters today. It was this tripling of brain size that provided them with the memory capacity that was essential for developing what were to become our breakout skills as a species – abstract thinking and language.