1. FIRE – it can be argued that fire was discovered rather than invented. Fire gave us warmth, protection, and led to a host of other key inventions and skills like cooking. The ability to cook helped us get the nutrients to support our expanding brains, giving us an indisputable advantage over other primates.

The oldest unequivocal evidence, found at Israel’s Qesem Cave, dates back 300,000 to 400,000 years, associating the earliest control of fire with Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. Now, however, an international team of archaeologists has unearthed what appear to be traces of campfires that flickered 1 million years ago.

There is archaeological evidence that some Stone Age people used fire to clear a site of vegetation and rodents before building a camp or settlement. They also used fire to clear obstacles, get rid of harmful plants, and create more navigable trails or roads.

About a million years before steak tartare came into fashion, Europe’s earliest humans were eating raw meat and uncooked plants. But their raw cuisine wasn’t a trendy diet; rather, they had yet to use fire for cooking, a new study finds.

Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of control of fire by a member of Homo range from 1.7 to 2.0 million years ago (Mya). Evidence for the “microscopic traces of wood ash” as controlled use of fire by Homo erectus, beginning some 1,000,000 years ago, has wide scholarly support.

Animals cannot eat raw meat without problems. They do get sick and contract diseases and parasites by eating flesh of other animals. Thats why carnivores are eaten so much less commonly than herbivores: not only are they harder to keep and farm, but they are harder to keep healthy via their food source.

A new study suggests that neither we nor our ancestors were capable of eating raw meat without some form of processing. As Lieberman discovered first hand, modern human teeth are not suited to breaking chunks of raw meat into pieces that are small enough to swallow.