1.9m years to develop microwavable food

Last Updated on Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:56 Tuesday, 23 August 2011 14:33

By: fanatic

The slow pace at which man progresses could be food for thought after scientists revealed evidence man first cooked hot meals 1.9 million years ago. After that much time, you'd think the pinnacle of our ingenuity would be something more than microwavable meals for two.

Scientists have said cooking was commonplace amongst Homo erectus after studying tooth sizes, DNA and body mass in extinct animals and comparing them to monkeys, apes and modern humans. The scientists concluded that eating cooked food led to smaller molar teeth as large teeth were not required for eating tough raw meat and skins. Cooked food also gave more energy to early homo erectus and so they developed faster and better. In comparasion, apes were left behind chewing raw foods for 48 per cent of their time, while 'new man' spent as little as 5 per cent of time on eating and cooking. Thus, man was able to invent the iPad and other useful gadgets while apes were more concerned with finding and eating food.

Dr. Chris Organ, chief author of the study (published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), wrote, "Humans are able to spend less time feeding because they typically consume higher-quality food than chimpanzees, and because they use cooking and non-thermal processing to render more calories available from food."

It's not known if couch potatoes stuffing their faces on pizza and crisps formed any part of the study.

Chef Homo Erectus. Courtesty of Wikimedia/ Lillyundfreya