Sunday, May 01, 2016
Wouldn't it make more sense.......
Listening to America's Test Kitchen, the only modern radio show that I make a point of hearing every week. They were discussing the origin of cooking with some anthropologists who studied chimps.... Turns out the famous "chimps can cook" study only showed that chimps like cooked food better, and that chimps can be patient to get cooked food. Patience isn't the important variable. Mice and squirrels use plenty of patience, storing food for months without eating it. Doesn't say anything about fire.
Convective thought: We generally assume that humans picked up the idea of fire from BIG lightning-caused wildfires. Good old Guk and Ik wandered BAREFOOT through the burned savannah, smelled the cooked sabertooth tiger, sampled it, and then figured out how to "store" fire. The "storing" is the hard part. Guk picks up a branch that's still burning and takes it home. Guk says to Og: "Hmp. Me like hot sabertooth. Me makeum TEDX clip. Show other tribe how do hot sabertooth."
Doesn't make much sense when you examine it.
Wouldn't it make more sense if we learned cooking as part of fermentation? We were definitely fermenting stuff from the start. Fermentation can EASILY get hot enough to spontaneously combust. It's a serious problem in grain elevators.
What do you have then? It's ALREADY food, already in the context of preservation, and it's a controlled smolder in the food itself. To remake the fire, you don't need to wait for a T-storm. In any season, just reproduce the way you fermented the barley. Same size of pile on same stone: presto!
100k years later we re-invented the microwave.
¶ 4:00 PM 
What do you have then? It's ALREADY food, already in the context of preservation, and it's a controlled smolder in the food itself. To remake the fire, you don't need to wait for a T-storm. In any season, just reproduce the way you fermented the barley. Same size of pile on same stone: presto!
100k years later we re-invented the microwave.
¶ 4:00 PM
