Let’s go back in time pre 1700’s
The Early Kitchen Evolution
Here the first signs of a “kitchen” came to be, with the fire!
First Fires
Throughout history wildlife across the world have been able to use fire to their benefit in order to thrive and evolve. Examples include birds of prey that take advantage of bush fires to flush out their prey as they attempt to escape these fires. However, no other animal has been able to control and try to tame fire itself in the same way that humans have in the kitchen evolution!
Early Humans would have always been aware of fires in the environment around them. From the natural fires occurring around them being from bushfires, to volcanic activity or even fires caused
by lightning strikes.
Evolutionists theorize that over time, pre-humans may have also learned how to make primitive fires. By using sticks and flint or by using pre-existing fires to create new ones. These scientists believe that learning to make and control fire was most likely one of the earliest discoveries made by pre-humans that walked upright on two legs.
Benefits of Fires
Larger Brains
Fire overtime became imbedded into human behaviour and society. This impacted basic human biology, allowing us to develop higher quality diets and improving our brain function. This is evident by the fossil records in past epochs by the increase in skull size, a direct indicator of an increase in brain size and functionality.
Less sickness
Early humans began to discover that people would get not as sick and less often by cooking their food. The process of cooking removes harmful bacteria and pathogens from the raw foods, allowing for safe eating.
Access to Nutrients
Cooking food improves digestion and increases the absorption of many nutrients. For example, the protein in cooked eggs is 180% more digestible than that of raw eggs. Furthermore, disease was less likely to come about as these foods could now stay edible for longer periods of time. Allowing food to be stored for many more days. This then allowing for less time hunting and using this energy for other activities in the day.
Telling Stories
Improving diet and preventing sickness isn’t the only benefit fire has for humans. With humans beginning to use fire for cooking purpose, it allowed for early societies to form groups that would hunt together, cook together, and eat the meal together. Sitting around a fire, formed a sense of a home and comfort. This is one of the places of origin for storytelling and education. The practice of passing down knowledge from the elders around a campfire. Interesting that still today a kitchen can be a place where we come to share our days experiences and also teach and learn from each other.
Sleep Impact
Another interesting side component to fire is that we have spent so much time as humans with it, that this light does not affect our sleeping patterns. Our Pineal gland that helps regulate sleep doesn’t get negatively affected by firelight. This firelight has even been shown to have soothing effects on our brains, whereas bluer lights like Incandescent, fluorescent, and LED can have major negative impacts on our sleeping patterns. Hopefully this makes you think of the impacts that artificial light has on us with your light choices when planning lighting for your kitchen renovation.
We have done some other Healthy House research powered by Innovation House
