The Smithsonian summary of *Homo sapiens* behavior notes that early modern humans "spent a large part of each day gathering plants and hunting or scavenging animals." It states that "By 164,000 years ago modern humans were collecting and **cooking shellfish** and by 90,000 years ago modern humans had begun making special fishing tools." This is presented as some of the earliest clear evidence of cooking activities for our species, well after the species’ origin around 200,000 years ago.

The article explains that “In the case of H. sapiens, known remains only date back some 300,000 years” and that the oldest Homo sapiens remains yet found are “fragments of 300,000-year-old skulls, jaws, teeth and other fossils found at Jebel Irhoud” in Morocco. It also notes other very old fossils “often classified as early Homo sapiens” such as Florisbad, South Africa (around 260,000 years old) and the Kibish Formation along Ethiopia’s Omo River (around 195,000 years old).

Hublin et al. describe new fossils from Jebel Irhoud and conclude: “The fossils from Jebel Irhoud document early stages of the H. sapiens clade in which key features of modern morphology are established.” They date the site to about 315 ka (thousand years ago): “thermoluminescence dating of heated flints from Jebel Irhoud yielded an age of 315 ± 34 ka.” This pushes the earliest known Homo sapiens fossils well beyond 200,000 years ago.

Aubert et al. revise the age of the Omo Kibish I remains in Ethiopia. They write: “Here we report a minimum age of 233 ± 22 thousand years (ka) for the Omo I fossils based on the geochemical fingerprinting of the Shala eruption and new 40Ar/39Ar ages.” The authors note that “this revised age confirms that Omo I is the oldest unequivocal H. sapiens in Africa,” placing clearly modern human fossils well before 200,000 years ago.

Marean et al. report on Pinnacle Point, South Africa, and write: "Here we show that by ~164,000 years ago, at a site on the southern Cape shore of South Africa, humans exploited marine resources (shellfish) and used pigment, probably for symbolic behavior." They describe repeated burning features: "Hearths, ash lenses and burnt lithics indicate controlled use of fire" at the site, associated with the shellfish remains and other artifacts. This provides evidence that some *Homo sapiens* populations along the southern African coast were using fire, including for processing shellfish, by about 164,000 years ago.

The museum overview explains that the use of fire was a key milestone and notes: "*H. erectus* may have been the earliest human relative to have controlled fire." It describes Wonderwerk Cave: "researchers found evidence of ash as well as burnt bone fragments in a one-million-year-old sediment layer in the Wonderwerk Cave in South Africa." The article emphasizes that the ash was found deep in the cave, so "too far inside a cave for the ash to be caused by a lightning strike" and that spontaneous combustion was ruled out, implying deliberate fire use by hominins long before *Homo sapiens* arose.

Examining Middle Stone Age faunal and botanical remains from southern Africa, the authors find evidence of repeated fire use and consumption of a broad range of resources by early Homo sapiens but note that the pattern is based on a limited number of sites. They caution that although these data show fire‑assisted food processing in some Homo sapiens groups by >100,000 years ago, the spatial coverage of sites is too patchy to claim that such cooking practices were universally widespread among all Homo sapiens populations at that time.

Reporting on research at Klasies River in South Africa, the article states that "small pieces of charred tubers" from the site "date back 120,000 years, making them the earliest-known evidence of H. sapiens cooking carbs," based on a 2019 paper in the Journal of Human Evolution.[1] It adds that these finds show that more than 100,000 years ago people were "roasting tubers over the fire," and notes that other work has found hominins roasting nuts and tubers about 780,000 years ago at a different site, implying an earlier tradition of cooking in non–Homo sapiens hominins.[1]

The remains of a huge carp fish mark the earliest signs of cooking by prehistoric humans to 780,000 years ago. Until now, the earliest evidence of cooking dates to approximately 170,000 years ago. Until now, evidence of the use of fire for cooking had been limited to sites that came into use much later than the GBY site, and ones most are associated with the emergence of our own species, Homo sapiens.

The museum overview explains that there are "several sites showing evidence of burnt bones and charcoal that date back 1.5 million years, attributed to our relatives Homo erectus, but those are only circumstantial signs, not direct proof of intentionally cooking something."[4] It then says that for "our direct human family, Homo sapiens, [they] left evidence of cooking starchy plants in an underground oven in Africa dating back 170,000 years ago," and mentions a 780,000‑year‑old site in Israel with possible evidence of hominids cooking food, which would predate Homo sapiens and likely relate to Homo erectus.[4]

Summarizing Richard Wrangham’s work, the article notes that "archaeological evidence of fire and cooking dates back only about 800,000 years" because physical remnants of fire degrade, even though he argues that the control of fire and cooking likely began much earlier.[5] It explains that Wrangham uses biological evidence to suggest that around 1.8 million years ago Homo erectus developed larger brains and smaller guts, jaws, and teeth—"changes consistent with the switch to a more tender and energetically rich diet of cooked food"—implying that an obligate reliance on cooked food predates Homo sapiens.[5]

The article states that "existing evidence suggests humans started cooking 170,000 years ago" based on heated remains of starchy plants found in an underground oven in Africa, identified as the prior oldest direct evidence of cooking.[2] It reports that a new study at an Israeli site near the Jordan River uncovered cooked remains of a carp‑like fish that had been heated in a controlled environment about 780,000 years ago, pushing back the earliest direct evidence of cooking by more than 600,000 years and indicating early controlled cooking by hominins long before Homo sapiens.[2]

Archaeological evidence for fire use increased dramatically from about 300,000 years ago, close to the origin of our species, and at the dawn of the Middle Stone Age in Africa. Thick stacks of ash, suggesting repeated fire use, and therefore probably the ability to produce fire at will, have been found in some Middle Stone Age sites like Border Cave in South Africa.

This compiled overview cites research from multiple academic sources and notes that at Klasies River Cave, South Africa, charred food remains from hearths show that anatomically modern humans "were roasting and eating plant starches, such as those from tubers and rhizomes, as early as 120,000 years ago," quoting a University of the Witwatersrand release. It also summarizes work at Border Cave: "The inhabitants of the Border Cave ... were cooking starchy plants 170,000 years ago," and that because only modern human fossils are found there, "it has been deduced that the cooking of the starch was done by modern humans not another hominin." The article presents these as examples of early *Homo sapiens* cooking but does not claim that cooking was already universal across all populations by 200,000 years ago.

Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of control of fire by a member of Homo range from 1.7 to 2.0 million years ago. While it is likely that early fire-using hominins had already cooked their food, definitive evidence of this practice was by early Homo sapiens and Neanderthals 170,000 years ago. The new analysis of remains from Gesher Benot Ya’aqov pushes that date back to 780,000 years ago.

Homo sapiens likely emerged around 300,000 years ago, so a claim that cooking was widespread among Homo sapiens by 200,000 years ago is chronologically plausible in the sense that Homo sapiens existed by then. However, the archaeological record does not show clear, direct evidence that cooking was already widespread specifically among Homo sapiens at 200,000 years ago; the strongest evidence from roughly that period is for habitual fire use at some sites, while explicit cooking evidence is much later and remains sparse.

Researchers have discovered the earliest known instance of human-created fire, which took place in the east of England 400,000 years ago. The new discovery pushes the origin of human fire-making back by more than 350,000 years, far earlier than previously thought. Scientists said the fires at Barnham were being made by early Neanderthals.