Early Humans Started Smoking Meat Million Years Ago

Early humans began using fire to smoke and preserve meat as far back as one million years ago—not primarily for cooking, but to prevent massive elephant and hippo carcasses from rotting and to guard them from hungry predators.

New research from Tel Aviv University challenges the widely accepted “cooking hypothesis” and suggests our ancestors were sophisticated food preservationists long before they became regular chefs. The study reveals that a single elephant contained enough calories to feed 20-30 people for over a month, making meat preservation a critical survival skill.

The Million-Calorie Problem

What do you do when your hunting party brings down a 10-ton elephant? For early humans, this presented both an incredible opportunity and a logistical nightmare.

“The meat and fat of a single elephant, for example, contain millions of calories, enough to feed a group of 20–30 people for a month or more,” explained Dr. Miki Ben-Dor from Tel Aviv University’s Department of Archaeology. “A hunted elephant or hippopotamus was thus a real treasure—a kind of meat and fat ‘bank’ that needed to be protected and preserved for many days, since it was coveted not only by predators but also by bacteria.”

The researchers examined nine archaeological sites worldwide dating from 1.8 million to 800,000 years ago where evidence of early fire use was found. Every single site contained massive quantities of bones from large animals—elephants, hippos, rhinos, and other megafauna that dominated prehistoric landscapes.

Energy Economics Drive Innovation

Using data from modern hunter-gatherer societies, the team calculated that hunting large prey yielded over 16,000 calories per hour—more than ten times the return from gathering plants. This enormous energy difference explains why early humans specialized in taking down the biggest animals they could find.

But there was a catch. Unlike smaller prey that could be consumed quickly, megafauna presented early humans with what researchers call “storage challenges.” A hippopotamus weighing 1.5 tons contained about one million calories—enough to sustain a group of 25 people for 22 days. That’s nearly a month of having fresh meat constantly available, if they could keep it from spoiling and protect it from scavengers.

Fire as Food Technology

The breakthrough insight came from recognizing that fire served dual purposes for our ancestors:

Preservation: Smoking and drying meat extended its edible life far beyond what was possible with raw storage

Protection: Flames and smoke deterred the parade of predators and scavengers attracted to massive carcasses

“Fire served two vital purposes for early humans—first, to guard the large game from other predators and scavengers seeking to seize the ‘treasure,’ and second, to preserve the meat through smoking and drying, preventing spoilage and making it edible for a long period of time,” said Prof. Ran Barkai, who co-authored the study.

This represents a fundamentally different view of early fire use than the prevailing “cooking hypothesis,” which suggests humans began using fire primarily to cook food and aid digestion.

The Cooking Hypothesis Reconsidered

While cooking certainly provides benefits—making some foods easier to digest and releasing more calories—the energy gains were surprisingly modest compared to preservation and protection benefits. The researchers calculated that cooking meat improved digestibility by only about 8%, adding roughly 1,200 calories per hour to the energetic return.

More importantly, the energy costs of gathering fuel and maintaining fires often exceeded the modest caloric gains from cooking, especially for plant foods. This economic reality suggests early humans had more pressing reasons to invest in fire technology.

The study also revealed a crucial detail missing from previous research: fires used for preservation and protection would burn much longer than those used for simple cooking, making them more likely to leave archaeological traces that survive hundreds of thousands of years.

Living Among Giants and Predators

Early humans faced a dramatically different world than modern hunter-gatherers. Massive herbivores roamed in abundance—straight-tusked elephants that weighed up to 10 tons, hippos, rhinos, and other megafauna that dwarfed today’s largest land animals.

But this bounty came with serious risks. Homo erectus, weighing only 60-70 kilograms, had to defend their precious food caches from formidable competitors including cave lions, hyenas, and other large predators that could easily overpower human groups.

The researchers suggest this constant threat may have driven early humans to transition from sleeping in trees to sleeping on the ground near their fires—a major behavioral shift that required both courage and technological innovation.

Rethinking Human Evolution

The implications extend far beyond understanding ancient fire use. The study proposes that specialization in hunting large prey, rather than cooking, was the primary driver of key evolutionary changes in Homo erectus.

“In this study, we propose a new understanding of the factors that motivated early humans to begin using fire: the need to safeguard large hunted animals from other predators, and to preserve the vast quantity of meat over time,” Prof. Barkai concluded. “It is likely that once fire was produced for these purposes, it was also occasionally used for cooking—at zero marginal energetic cost.”

This reframing suggests our ancestors were sophisticated resource managers who developed complex technologies not just to make food taste better, but to maximize returns from risky, high-stakes hunting operations.

Modern Lessons from Ancient Innovation

The research demonstrates how environmental pressures drive technological innovation. Early humans faced the challenge of managing enormous food windfalls in a dangerous world—and invented solutions that became foundational human technologies.

As megafauna began disappearing due to climate change and hunting pressure, the need for large-scale preservation diminished. Humans adapted by hunting smaller prey and eventually developing agriculture, but the cognitive and cultural foundations laid during the age of giants shaped our species’ trajectory.

The study reminds us that human technological development often emerges from practical necessities rather than abstract desires for improvement. Our ancestors’ success in managing massive food resources may have provided the cognitive challenges and caloric surpluses that supported the dramatic brain growth characteristic of human evolution.