Importance of discovery of FIRE in human brain development
Did you know that fire is one of the reasons we humans have such large and functional brains and smaller intestines compared to other animals?
Discovery of fire was a watershed movement in human evolutionary history. It gave humans numerous advantages :
- Light
- Warmth
- Protection from other wild animals
- And most importantly cooking
Cooking is the most important gift of fire to us. Cooking made food softer, germ free and easily digestible. This all had great implications for human race.
Cooking vegetables or meat killed harmful germs to the most extent which helped reduce the mortality rate among humans. This is significantly important because cooked food allowed for healthier and much long lived humans. This helped us increase our numbers.
And the most important part is that cooking made food softer and easily digestible. Hence, humans didn’t need to spend hours chewing, tearing, and digesting meat or vegetables. This led to the decrease in our muscle strength, short intestine, and more importantly development of a huge brain.
All the bodily energy which was earlier being used for muscles and digesting (intestine) was then diverted to the brain. That is why humans have one of the biggest brains in mammals or any other species for that matter.
As human brain consumes around 25% of of our body’s energy, it’s hugely important to divert that energy from somewhere else and find easy ways to extract energy from food sources. So while human brain developed with the invention of fire, humans further invented or discovered more ways to make their life easier. This helped put more energy available for the brain.
Had some other species discovered fire earlier than humans, who knows what the world might be looking as of now. Maybe humans might not have survived, maybe they did but were locked away in some zoo for someone’s amusement.
