Deciding on the terminus for this adventure was not an easy decision. Starting an adventure of any kind is a momentous occasion, so I wanted to be sure I picked the perfect country to start us off. But I didn't know what my criteria for the terminus should be...
Should I choose a country I'd already visited?
France, South Africa, China, Canada
Or should I pick my home country?
United States of America
Maybe the country with the most Michelin-star restaurants?
France
Or should I let fate decide and leave it up to a random country generator?
It chose Mauritania
Perhaps I should pick the country I'm most excited about?
You'll have to wait and see!
But, after all that agonizing, I realized something. The first stop on this adventure is just that: the first stop. It is no more (and no less) important than any of the other countries we will be visiting. With this new insight, picking the first country became quite easy. I decided to let history, or rather archeology, decide.
The first stop on our adventure will be the country with the oldest archeological evidence of cooking. Do you know which country it is? If you're a fan of ancient history, you probably remember the Fertile Crescent. For those needing a refresher, the Fertile Crescent is the area between and around two ancient rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. These rivers brought water and fertile lands, essential factors for the emergence of early civilization. So it's no surprise the earliest evidence of cooking was found here.
Today, the Fertile Crescent is more commonly known as the Middle East. So, if you guessed a Middle Eastern country as our first stop, you'd be right. More specifically, if you guessed Israel, you'd be spot on. You paid attention in history class!
In 2022, archeologists working in the northern Jordan Valley found evidence of burned fish teeth beside a fireplace. By analyzing the crystal structures of the teeth, this archeological team discovered that the teeth were heated at a temperature under 500 degrees Celsius. Since a wood fire produces heat from 800 to 950 degrees Celsius, this 'reduced' temperature suggests the fish teeth were cooked with controlled heat rather than just tossed onto a fire.
The discovery of burned fish teeth in the Jordan Valley raises some interesting points about the nature of cooking and its history. While the earliest evidence of cooking was recently found in Israel, that doesn't mean this was the first time people cooked. Almost certainly, we will never know who cooked the first meal or what it was. Regardless of the circumstances of this historical event, it was almost certainly an accident.
One of the main theories about the origins of the first cooked meal is that it occurred after a wildfire. Early humans may have found a burnt animal carcass and discovered that charred meat was much easier to digest than raw. Of course, this theory places the "first" cooked meal before the official discovery of fire. Another theory places the "first" cooked meal after the discovery of fire when an early human accidentally dropped a fish or other protein source into flames.
My favorite theory is that the "first" cooked meal was a result of a religious practice. Throughout history, people have used food and flames in spiritual practices. Many ancient civilizations provided sacrifices to their gods by burning food. They believed the gods received their sacrifice via the smell and smoke from the flames. Other cultures practiced divination, throwing animal bones into a fire until they cracked. These cracks could then be studied in an attempt to predict the future. All it would take is one curious human to sample the offering after the fire went out to discover the "first" cooked meal.
Ultimately, will never know which theory is correct. In all likelihood, the ''first" cooked meal was a result of some circumstances modern humans have not even considered. However, the final theory does illustrate how entwined food and religion are. This is a theme we will return to time and time again throughout this adventure.
What Exactly is Cooking?
In the past few paragraphs, you may have noticed that I placed "first" within parenthesis when referring to the first cooked meal. This is for good reason. We've been talking about cooking like it requires heat. But that does not accurately reflect all that cooking is and can be. Even the Merriam-Webster dictionary agrees. It defines cooking as "the act of preparing food for eating, especially by heating."
This means that while we often think of cooking and heating food as synonymous, that's not the case. Applying heat to food is just a subset within the realm of cooking. Preparing food can involve cutting a vegetable, pounding a fruit into a paste, or grinding a nut into powder. All of these are examples of cooking, even if we don't necessarily think of it as cooking today. Based on this more inclusive and accurate definition of cooking, we can be pretty certain that the "first" cooked meal didn't involve meat at all. It was likely some preparation of a fruit, root, vegetable, nut, or other edible plant. My best guess is that the first cooking meal was a mother grinding (or even chewing) some plant to make it more palatable for her child. It's unlikely we'll ever find evidence of this meal, and even if we did, there would be no way of proving it was the "first".
The Importance of Cooking
While we'll never know what the first cooked meal was or who created it, we do know that cooking was massively important to early humans. Sure, cooking via heat makes food taste better and safer, but food cooked with heat has one major advantage over raw food. Cooked food is tremendously easier to process than uncooked food (and I'm using the word cooked here synonymously with heated). This means that when early humans started cooking food, they gained more energy from the cooked food. This is because their bodies did not have to expend as much energy actually processing the food.
Think of it like eating celery. Celery is a negative calorie food. This means that it takes more calories for your body to process the energy within celery than your body actually gets from that celery. In other words, eating celery + digesting celery = calorie deficit. Being able to process calories from food without expending a lot of calories while doing the processing is obviously advantageous to early humans.
The expensive tissue hypothesis is a theory championed by some anthropologists that hinges on the caloric advantage of cooked food. This hypothesis emerged in 1995 due to research by Leslie C. Aiello and Peter Wheeler. In their findings, these researchers note that "the increased energetic demands of a large brain are compensated for by a reduction in the mass-specific rates of other tissues." Put simply, in order for ancient humans to grow larger brains, other tissues had to use fewer calories.
In other words, cooking may be one of the main things that makes us human. I'm inclined to agree. While racoons may wash their food and orcas show a preference for shark liver over other organs, humans are the only species of animal that cook their food. We aren't human because we cook. Rather, cooking makes us human.
I'm excited to explore all the delicious cooked flavors our first stop has to offer. If you've been to Israel or love Israeli food, let me know what some of your favorite dishes are in the comments! As for me, I'm heading off to the grocery store to shop for the ingredients for my Israeli meal. Be sure to check back early tomorrow to discover which dish (or dishes) I decided to create!
