Mastery Of Fire

The single most transformative event in the history of human bands, fundamentally altering both their biology and social structures was their mastery over fire.  It shifted humans from just  "another primate"  to a unique "cooking animal" with a high energy lifestyle. Even at this stage they moved in bands foraging. The bands were a sort of consanguin relationship.  Until at least 40000 years ago all humans lived in bands.

In the course of our evolution we used ingenuity to out-source digestion, moving part of the process outside our bodies. This process is known as cooking and it served as a form of pre-digestion.  It broke down complex starch and denatured protein making them significantly easier to digest. To early humans, it was a gain of 30 to 50 percent of energy from the same amount of food.  Many plants like tubers and seeds that were toxic or indigestable when raw, became staple food source when cooked. Heat kills parasites and bacteria in raw meat, which was crucial for early Homo erectus bands who increasingly relied on scavenging and hunting. 

Biological Consequences 

Calories spent on digesting the raw grains were saved that led to massive physical changes over hundreds of thousands of years, finally leading to brain growth.  Because cooked food was softer and easy to digest some human organs like jaw and teeth gradually shrank. Simultaneously human digestive organs became smaller, and they no longer needed to ferment large volume of raw grains and meat.

Higher caloric intake led to earlier weaning, allowing females to have more children helping mankind to expand into colder climates. 

Fire became the hearth, the central hub of social life.  The social brain, gathering around the fire at night extended to day, providing a safe space for storytelling, bonding, and the potential development of language.

Maintaining a fire required a new level of inter-band coordination --- gathering wood, tending the flames, and guarding the site from predators.

Fire allowed for special roles.  Some individuals could focus on hunting while others remained around hearth to process and cook the catch. 

Fire offered a defence against the predators, allowing bands sleep on the ground rather than on trees.

Cooking fundamentally brought a change in the tools used by early humans.  Before the fire, tools were primarily about extraction (getting to the food).  After fire, they evolved towards processing and refinement.

Oldowen or Mode 1 was widespread

stone tool Archeological industry during the early Lower Paleolithic spanning the late Pliocene and the first half of Early Pliocene, beginning from about 2.6 million years ago.

All these classifications are based on certain hypothesis. 

Oldowen was followed by Acheulean

characterised by distinct oval and pear shaped hand axes.