CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS—When did cooking emerge in human evolution? Felix Warneken of Harvard University and Alexandra Rosati of Yale University investigated whether or not chimpanzees have the cognitive capacities necessary for cooking as a way to approach this question. “If our closest evolutionary relative possesses these skills, it suggests that once early humans were able to use and control fire they could also use it for cooking,” Warneken said in a press release. Beyond the control of fire, cooking requires planning and the causal understanding that putting raw food on a fire changes it. Warneken and Rosati traveled to the Jane Goodall Institute’s Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Sanctuary in the Republic of Congo in order to work with wild-born chimpanzees. They found that the chimps preferred cooked food, and they have the necessary cognitive abilities to produce it. “Why would early humans be motivated to control fire? I think cooking might give you a reason. We know wild chimps will observe natural fire, and they even sometimes seek out and eat cooked food left behind by it. The evidence from our cognitive studies suggests that, even before controlling fire, early hominins understood its benefits and could reason about the outcomes of putting food on fire,” Rosati said. To read more, go to "Our Tangled Ancestry."
