The Art of Aging: From Hunting and Gathering to Cooking.

The invention of cooking, not baskets, may have led to the evolution of modern human anatomy from Australopithecus to Homo erectus. Cooked meat is easier to digest and provides more energy than raw meat, which may have allowed for more efficient foraging and hunting. Sharing cooked meat around a fire may have led to the development of social structures and gender roles, with men hunting and women gathering. The oldest evidence for hearths is only about 250,000 years old, so the exact timeline of these developments is still speculative.