30 July 2025 The Future is the Product of the Past

Israeli researchers have found evidence of cooking fish 780,000 years ago at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov

Hominins living at Gesher Benot Ya’akov 780,000 years ago liked their fish to be well cooked, Israeli researchers revealed Monday, in what they said was the earliest evidence of fire being used to cook.

Preparing food with heat or fire is an activity unique to humans.  However, exactly when our ancestors started cooking has been a matter of controversy among archaeologists because it is difficult to prove that an ancient fireplace was used to prepare food, and not just for warmth.

According to a new study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, the first “definitive evidence” of cooking was by Neanderthals and early Homo sapiens 170,000 years ago.

The study, which pushes that date back by more than 600,000 years, is the result of 16 years of work by its first author Irit Zohar, an archaeologist at Tel Aviv University’s Steinhardt Museum of Natural History.

The discovery has implications for our understanding of how humans evolved, revealing that our so-called primitive forefathers were far more advanced than previously thought, according to the researchers. It also emphasizes the role of fishing versus hunting in human development, according to the authors.

Gesher Benot Ya’akov (“Daughters of Jacob Bridge” in Hebrew) is situated on the Jordan River’s banks. It was once a rich, marshy area on the shores of the Hula paleo-lake, and hominins would return there for 100,000 years to hunt and feast on giant two-meter-long carps, elephants, and local fruits and plants.

The Skull of latter-day carp not showing its pharyngeal teeth. Photo: Tel Aviv University

Previously discovered burnt flint tools at Gesher suggested that the locals knew how to use fire. Still, scorched artifacts or sediments are often insufficient to tell us whether the fire was natural, accidental, or purposefully made and controlled and whether it was used for warmth, cooking, or garbage disposal.

But at Gesher, the excavators noticed something unusual, according to Dr. Irit Zohar, an archaeologist and marine biologist at Tel Aviv University’s Natural History Museum and Oranim Academic College. 40,000 fish remains were discovered in the same layers as the burnt flints, with more than 95 percent of them being teeth, according to Zohar, the study’s lead author.

What became of all the bones?  The most likely explanation was that the fish had been cooked, as this softens the bones (which is why fish bones are frequently used to make gelatin). As a result, any bones that were left over would have quickly decomposed, leaving only the teeth for archaeologists to discover nearly a million years later.

The teeth were examined using X-ray diffraction to examine the nanocrystals that make up the enamel in order to test this hypothesis. The manager of the X-ray lab at the Natural History Museum in London, Dr. Jens Najorka, explains that these crystalline structures enlarge when heated. Najorka reports that the crystals in the enamel on the fish teeth from Gesher did, in fact, exhibit a slight size expansion consistent with the application of low-to-moderate heat, less than 500 degrees Celsius.

According to Zohar, the low temperature is significant because it indicates cooking, whereas a higher temperature would have simply meant that the leftovers were burned by being thrown into the fire, either as fuel or as a method of waste disposal.

Previous research had shown that the burnt flints found at Gesher were not distributed randomly, as if they had been burned in a natural bush fire, but were found in dense concentrations, likely marking the locations where hominins purposefully and repeatedly made hearths and lit their fires over tens of thousands of years.

According to Naama Goren-Inbar, an emerita professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the archaeologist in charge of the Gesher dig, the findings of the latest study “only reinforce the conclusion that the locals could control fire.”

Cover Photo: Illustration of hominins cooking fish. Ella Maru / University of Tel Aviv

Related Articles

Archaeologists Discover Northernmost Hellenistic Elite Residence Featuring Ionic Architecture and Graffito in North Macedonia

2 July 2025

2 July 2025

In a groundbreaking archaeological campaign, the NL Museum of Kumanovo has unearthed a remarkable Hellenistic-era residence near the village of...

6,000-year-old island settlement found off the Croatian coast

24 June 2021

24 June 2021

Archaeologist Mate Parica, a professor at the University of Zadar, noticed something unusual while examining satellite images of Croatia‘s coastline....

Scandinavia’s Oldest Identified Ship Burial in Trøndelag “Rewrites History”

14 November 2023

14 November 2023

In Leka, a municipality in Norway’s Trøndelag county, archaeologists have uncovered Scandinavia’s oldest identified ship burial, dating back to around...

The first Iberian lead plate inscribed with an archaic script was found at Pico de Los Ajos in Yátova

13 June 2021

13 June 2021

At the Pico de Los Ajos site in Valencia, Spain, a rare lead sheet engraved in ancient Iberian was unearthed....

Prehistoric Cave Art Handprints With Missing Fingertips Point to Ritual Amputation

3 January 2024

3 January 2024

Researchers who examined prehistoric cave art in France and Spain, a new interpretation of Paleolithic cave art proposes that prehistoric...

A Scientific Surprise: Bering Land Bridge formed surprisingly late during last ice age

1 January 2023

1 January 2023

A new study shows that the Bering Land Bridge, the strip of land that once connected Asia to Alaska, emerged...

Ice Age turtle finds near Magdeburg point to canned food from the Stone Age

2 May 2024

2 May 2024

Experts have recovered around 50,000-year-old turtle shell fragments from the Barleben-Adamsee gravel pit near Magdeburg. The turtles could have been...

Crusade period grave field and a sword discovered in Finland

15 October 2023

15 October 2023

A large cemetery from the time of the Crusades was discovered near a medieval stone church in Salo Perttel, a...

Archaeologists uncovered a kurgan tomb from a previously unknown culture

8 January 2023

8 January 2023

Archaeologists from the Siberian Federal University have unearthed a kurgan tomb and numerous bronze tools and artifacts from a previously...

3,000-year-old skeletons of nine children were discovered in Qazvin province, Iran

29 April 2023

29 April 2023

Archaeologists from the University of Tehran have discovered the remains of children dating back 3,000 years during excavations in an...

A Fig Dating Back Over 2,000 Years has been Discovered in North Dublin – A First of Its Kind for Ireland

28 November 2024

28 November 2024

The discovery of a fig dating back 2,000 years during an archaeological excavation of Drumanagh in north Dublin, has been...

Ancient golden neck ring found in Denmark

24 April 2022

24 April 2022

A one-of-a-kind golden neck ring from the Germanic Iron Age (400-550 A.D.) has been discovered in a field not far...

Evidence of the Birth of Archaic Monotheism in Anatolia found at Oluz Höyük, “Havangah prayer at Oluz Höyük”

27 March 2022

27 March 2022

Oluz Höyük, located 25 kilometres west of Amasya, is an ancient city which has rich findings of religious structuring. During...

1500-Year-Old Petroglyphs Found in Central Iran

13 April 2021

13 April 2021

Researchers have discovered 70 petroglyphs carved into the rock that they think is from the Sassanid era. The petroglyphs were...

Archaeologists uncovered a 3,500-year-old Egyptian Royal Retreat in the Sinai Desert

5 May 2024

5 May 2024

An Egyptian mission uncovered the ruins of a 3,500-year-old “royal fortified rest area” at the Tel Habwa archaeological site in...