Timeline for Is eating cooked food an evolved behavior or rather an intelligent one, passed down via culture?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
19 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Feb 1, 2021 at 14:47 | answer | added | Roger V. | timeline score: 0 | |
| Feb 1, 2021 at 10:33 | answer | added | bandybabboon | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jan 30, 2021 at 13:53 | comment | added | Mike Serfas | The headline of this question says "eating cooked food" but the text says "cooking food", which is a different question. Human ancestors in an environment like the Okavango Delta would have encountered carcasses killed by seasonal wildfires. I suspect intelligence would have permitted early humans to scavenge in fire-prone areas successfully where many other genera would suffer unacceptable risk. | |
| Jan 29, 2021 at 14:02 | comment | added | John | @inf3rno cooking predates Homo sapien by a wide margin, it may very well be the thing that allowed us to evolve, Again I don't think you understand what instinctual behavior is, just because something requires learning does not mean it is not instinctual, there are plenty of instinctual behaviors that have to be learned. There is no human society that does not cook their food. also yes the human digestive system is adapted to eating cooked food, as are our taste buds. | |
| Jan 29, 2021 at 7:43 | comment | added | inf3rno | @John Still it does not make sense to think that it is inherited to cook stuff. Without the capability to make fire all you can do is collect all your meat and pray for a wildfire. Maybe you get it maybe you starve to death. Not a solid strategy to survive. The first humans just ate what they found after a wildfire and learned that it is good. After a while they learned that they can make fire. And that's all. It is something easy to learn from others, no need to code it genetically. Maybe the digestive system changed because they started to eat cooked food instead of raw. | |
| Jan 29, 2021 at 7:40 | comment | added | inf3rno | @John "language is a great example a human needs other humans to develop language" - Sure and normally it is granted, because people live in families and groups. Afaik. the brain structure for languages are genetically coded just as the organs to make sounds. | |
| Jan 29, 2021 at 6:07 | comment | added | John | @inf3rno, touching fire may actually be evidence for it being instinctual most animals instinctually avoid and fear fire. Not true for humans. Also learned and instinct are not mutually exclusive, plenty of instinctual behavior have learned components. not knowing how to do something does not mean you do not instinctually desire to do it. | |
| Jan 29, 2021 at 5:58 | comment | added | John | @inf3rno you prefer, not basically all great apes on the planet prefer, which is true of cooked food. language is a great example a human needs other humans to develop language, (if you don't learn at least language by puberty you will never have syntaxed language) but every human caries an instinct for language, and if two children with no language are put together for a while they will develop a complete language from nothing. Instinct is not just fixed action loops. | |
| Jan 29, 2021 at 5:21 | comment | added | inf3rno | @John Sure, but you have everything to reproduce when you are born, while you don't have the knowledge to make fire. Kids even try to touch fire, because they don't know that it burns. Even if preferences are instincts, it does not mean that they are not learned. For example I prefer blue over pink, because pink is a color for girls at least I learned that when I was a kid and now it is an instinct. My English is not good enough, but I guess reproduction is more than a simple instinct, it is a strong urge. So probably that is a better word for what I was talking about. | |
| Jan 29, 2021 at 4:47 | comment | added | John | @inf3rno having an instinct to do something is not the same thing as being able to do it, I am sure you would agree humans have an instinct to reproduce even if some fail. An instinct could be something as simple as preference, and on average humans prefer cooked foods, particularly meats and starches. Then you have things like language that is instinctual but still has to be learned. | |
| Jan 29, 2021 at 4:38 | answer | added | John | timeline score: 3 | |
| Dec 7, 2014 at 8:28 | vote | accept | J.Todd | ||
| Dec 6, 2014 at 10:08 | answer | added | AngieTheCat | timeline score: 2 | |
| Nov 14, 2014 at 3:14 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackBiology/status/533095621800898560 | ||
| Nov 14, 2014 at 2:17 | comment | added | inf3rno | I think it is easy to decide this. Do we have an instinct to cook something after we killed it? I don't think so... At least I never felt it... There are stories about missing children have been living in the forest for many years, etc... If they cannot make fire (I think so), then there is no such an instinct, because without fire you won't cook... (Except if they have an instinct to build a microwave oven or use geothermal energy...) | |
| Nov 14, 2014 at 2:05 | comment | added | AliceD♦ | @user137: it is not the evolutionary consequence of cooking that is under question, it is the evolution of cooking itself that is questioned. | |
| Nov 14, 2014 at 1:59 | comment | added | user137 | @ChrisStronks I think there are nutritional benefits to cooking food, compare human teeth and digestive tracts to those in gorillas and chimps. We just aren't able to process raw food as well as they do, so cooking replaces part of the digestive process. This implies we've been cooking long enough to have an evolutionary effect, otherwise there wouldn't have been time to lose the large guts. It is speculated that spending less energy on digestive tracts allowed humans to develop larger brains. If true, it's an interesting interaction between a learned behavior (cooking) and evolution. | |
| Nov 14, 2014 at 1:34 | comment | added | AliceD♦ | I think cultural. It is too a complex behavior to be simply evolved. In addition, many species will not even come close to fire. Plus, you have to learn cooking. lastly, the nutritional benefits are questionable although it is definitely beneficial for health as it kills germs. So in terms of evolution there could be a pressure on evolving this behavior, but again, I think it is too a complex thing to be hardwired into the brain. | |
| Nov 14, 2014 at 1:20 | history | asked | J.Todd | CC BY-SA 3.0 |