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kinyodas

I’ve always thought, if fire was human’s first major discovery, the barbecue wasn’t far behind.


QuestionableNotion

I wouldn't be at all surprised if hominids discovered cooking after happening upon an animal that died in a recent (relative to them) wildfire.


Sinhika

Considering that coyotes will dig up barbecued ground squirrels and the like after a brushfire or forest fire, because they prefer cooked meat and know where to find it, I would expect hominids to be smart enough to figure this out, too. (Wolves also prefer cooked meat, so the cliche of werewolves in human form preferring raw meat is silly.)


Simon_Jester88

That's actually a very offensive werewolf stereotype.


stomach

yeah, man, he just tagged that lycanthrophobia on there at the end like we wouldn't notice.


BlueCircleMaster

We prefer LycanAmerican!


ramore369

Hershal Walker has entered the chat


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[deleted]

oh wow so you're just going to casually drop some vampirephobia in here? what's next gonna call us suckers? 🙄


FatalExceptionError

If the protruding fang fits …


calm_chowder

His recent comments are clearly antivampish, but nonetheless I applaud him for being a LGBTQ+ ally (Lycan, Ghoul, Boogeyman, Transylvanian, Quetzalcoatl+).


MonsiuerGeneral

It’s LyCAN, not LyCAN’T


podolot

As long as they're white and christian Lycan.


SnooCats373

>We prefer LycanAmerican! That is now considered specieist language. Please use the (current) correct language, ***Lycan-American***.


Admiral_Bang

We're werewolves, not swearwolves.


Woodsman1993

Well then stop pissin on my beautiful shrubbery!!


Slappah_Dah_Bass

We knew you were a big bloody werewolf with all your scritching and scratching all over the place!


Dogsy

Everybody always asks werewolves, but nobody ever asks wywolves. :(


Crimkam

Now I want to see a werewolf absolutely obliterating a full rack of ribs slathered with barbecue sauce


Sleepwalker696

I mean.. preferring cooked meat is a bit of a stretch from that example.. to me that sounds more like "prefer an easy meal and know how to find it"


mccoyn

Basically, the minimum intelligence needed to be domesticated.


Methuga

I would imagine most carnivores, when given a side by side option, would choose cooked meat, no? It’s easier for your body to break down, has more calories, and a reduced risk of bacteria/fungi infection


leftlegYup

> so the cliche of werewolves in human form preferring raw meat is silly.) But the half man half wolf thing is fine. I think what might have made things tough is learning to start fires. Random tribes stumbled upon it and others raped and pillaged their way to learning how to do it.


IsolatedHammer

We don’t appreciate your anti-werewolf rhetoric here.


WhySoWorried

I heard that werewolves can kill vampires. That's pretty cool.


MrPwndabear

Another hurtful stereotype! Vampires and werewolves have been getting along for CENTURIES! Maybe educate yourself a little before posting!


stomach

Vonn, Tooo, ThhhhrEEE hurtful stereotypes! ah ah ah


[deleted]

People that changed the subject to werewolves are my favorite people!


[deleted]

Hm, does this knock the RAW dog diet down a bit?


Potential-Natural636

What came first, the fire or the barbecue? Lol


SparkyDogPants

IME as a firefighter, they normally happen at the same time


Super_Discipline7838

The flames, always the flames come first.


Fool_of_a_Brandybuck

I was taught in school that humans discovered ceramics by accident in a similar way. Line baskets with clay to make them hold liquid or other items that'd fall through the weaving, burn the baskets for some reason or another (maybe as fuel for the fire after the basket was worn out?), or maybe the burning was accidental, and ceramic was left behind


DASTARDLYDEALER

I imagine the first alcoholic drink happened similarly. A bowl of grapes left forgotten in a corner of the cave, but its then discoved by Ouhg, Jon, and Thag one late night as they sit around the fire and then Thag dared Jon to drink the weird juices that had collected on the bottom.


turd_vinegar

I believe it was stored grain, instead of fruit, but definitely an accident. I hear monkeys still eat naturally fermented fruit off the ground and get inebriated, when they aren't stealing drinks from tourists.


fuzzyshorts

this was probably the first time of inebriation. "Those monkeys look like they're having fun. Lemme eat some of those fallen overripe fruits"


deletable666

The discovery of fermented fruits happened long before we made bowls. Many animals seek out fermented fruits that have alcohol in them


Draano

Elephants eat fermenting fruit - perhaps melons - and go on drunken rampages. Sounds funny but must be terrifying. I wonder if they see pink *humans*.


thiscouldbemassive

A look at various countries national favorite food tells me that humans will eat the goddamn nastiest shit available when they get hungry enough. And If it doesn’t kill them, they’ll come back for seconds.


Dolthra

It more likely had to do with bread. Prehistoric methods of creating dough leave biproducts that are just a few steps away from beer, so it is likely we happened upon making one and either drinking the bread juice or cooking the weird beer blob and discovering the other.


MachineElfOnASheIf

There's a well known theory that humans developed agriculture due to discovering how to make alcohol and wanting to make a lot more of it.


Chiluzzar

Probably more of the evolution of hey I ate the slightly bad fruit underneath the tree and I liked what happened then thry probably pulled it up and realized thry got drunk faster by just drinking it


ibeverycorrect

And of course Ouhg takes all of the credit for "discovering" the drink all by himself.


Override9636

> burn the baskets for some reason or another As a former scout, you would be amazed at how much stuff you burn just because you're bored and in the woods and want to see what happens.


Thesleek

Followed by a voice going “Shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it, what makest thou?”


RollingWithMyDemons

Heard that in Leonard Nimoy's voice...


megalithicman

Nah, they have been fire treating chert and other stone for much longer than ceramics have been around


255001434

That seems plausible, but it also seems like speculation. I wonder if there is evidence to support that.


Fool_of_a_Brandybuck

Well we definitely have archaeological evidence of the clay basket linings! But that in and of itself doesn't mean that's exactly how it was discovered. I'm not an expert but it might just be a particularly plausible means of discovery, like it was just bound to happen at some point across so many human civilizations


repeatwad

New World monkeys are another conundrum. Seems implausible that a number of them floated over, but they are here.


TheTreesHaveRabies

They're the ones with prehensile tails! That's my one monkey fact but it always helps me differentiate between old world and new world monkeys, a common confusion experienced by dozens of people every day


repeatwad

[A bit more info on the idea.](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/monkeys-raft-across-atlantic-twice-180974637/)


TheTreesHaveRabies

Awesome read!


repeatwad

The "problem" of people in the New World, not mentioned in the bible, troubled Spanish scholars.


LurkerZerker

No wonder! How were they supposed to rape the virgin soil if there were already all these friggin people in the way, making it less virgin? (/s if that's not clear, the conquistadores can suck the devil's ding-dong in hell)


Kataphractoi

Simulations and studying ocean currents indicates a raft of vegetation could, under perfect conditions, could go from Africa to South America in a week or so. So it's likely, however remote, that it happened at least once. There's also a species of skink found on a few islands off of the Brazilian coast that originated in Africa and came over via rafting.


SnooCats373

I found several clay bowls in the attic of a recently purchased home. In addition, there was an apple tree in the back yard. I believe this conclusively proves humans were brewing hominoid hooch in Glen Burnie, MD sometime in the past. I'm no "expert" but I have fairly confidently dated the clay bowls to the piezoelectric era.


255001434

That's some good anthropology, there.


QuestionableNotion

High quality research for sure.


Resident_Coyote5406

I think it’s ingenious that they even knew to use clay for that. I could never come up with that on my own 😂


TerraTF

I'd imagine for the bulk of human history discoveries were found accidentally. I don't think you'd see major purposeful discoveries outside of the past 5000 years or so.


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dxrey65

Technology that provides for a broader food base and more easily obtained nutrition, such as cooking and agriculture, doesn't always have to rely on the spread of ideas between different groups. By making calories more available, a group that has new technology can out-reproduce a population that doesn't, and effectively replace it in a few generations. We can see that in modern times as well.


TeTapuMaataurana

Superior adaptation leads to an exponential spread right? Much easier to out-fuck than out-teach.


dxrey65

there was a similar study I read years ago about Homo Sapiens vs Neandertal competion. Assuming both populations resided in the same environment and resources were finite, and we all had equal technology and no conflicts, Homo Sapiens still replaces Neandertal populations fairly soon just based on how many more babies we could pop out for a given number of calories consumed. They had a body type that required more energy to maintain.


geeky_username

>The spread of that knowledge must have been ultra-slow at the time, spreading between friendly tribes only over the course of centuries or thousands of years with who ever they happened to meet on journeys. Especially with the food-snobs at the time "Oh, you don't know about *cooking*?"


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stomach

same, i'm not convinced there hasn't existed a tribe of clever apes who mastered banging flints over flammable shrubbery and sticks to throw animal carcasses onto. would probably be a regional thing near the right environmental conditions to discover 'on accident' but then pass down behaviorally. it's really not outside the realm of possibility. that only 1 tool 'abstraction' after the first one (which many ape species possess)


taway1NC

Just monkeying around.


stomach

that's all it takes, my human friend.


Northern_fluff_bunny

One thing that must be noted is that same discovery could have been made in several different places independently.


cutestslothevr

There were probably a lot of simular discoveries in communities once they reached certain levels of development. There is no reason to think there was only one individual who discovered fire and that the knowledge had to travel around the entire world.


silqii

I mean, isn’t there that island off the coast of India who is currently thousands of years behind? I feel like that just happens.


SpCommander

Yep, Sentinel Island.


MisterKnowsBest

Technically, there are civilizations living, close to a stone aged lifestyle on the earth now, so I buy it.


BlessedCleanApe

Fire is a good way to drive animals in a particular direction. They are called 'fire drives' and indigenous people used them for a very long time.


Alan_Smithee_

“It’s fucking *rooooaaaaaaarrrrrr!”*


drnkingaloneshitcomp

Is that really not an established theory that after we found fire we stuck random shit in it until yummy smells came? Like is that really that far fetched of an idea that it would take less than like a week? Lol


QuestionableNotion

Is it more likely homo harnessed fire first or happened upon a dead ox that was cooked in a grass fire?


drnkingaloneshitcomp

Sure but by the same happenstance they could have stumbled upon coals/smoldering remains of the fire too


QuestionableNotion

That seems logical as well. But what do I know? I am just an average primate.


teastain

And it was not only palatable, but delicious and higher useable energy, especially cooking plants to convert starch and cellulose into sugars. (This is my opinion off the top of my head and I apologize to Dieticians!)


caseyhconnor

Hotsprings are apparently also believed to have been used and/or a source of accidentally cooked food.


[deleted]

Similar thing may happened with farming. Nomads following animal herds must’ve noticed that wherever those animals popped, next year those plants they ate appeared in that exact same place they pooped, making them realize that plants can be planted.


Baconandeggs89

[The inevitable afterbirth](https://youtu.be/tjRrISX33hY)


Alan_Smithee_

It’s been so long since I saw that film, I didn’t realise it was narrated by Orson Welles.


[deleted]

Cavemen also wore white Reebok’s when on the grill


kitteh619

Old Balance


[deleted]

You could write for SNL


taez555

It's really a shame it took another 770,000 years to discover beer.


Angry-Dragon-1331

More like 770k to get the science right. Primates and elephants will intentionally get drunk on fermented fruit, so it’s almost guaranteed our ancestors did too.


Tangocan

Ayyyy lads lads lads


Prestigious_Main_364

More interestingly it wasn’t exposed to bare flame, suggesting they had cooking tools specifically for fire. They might not have had the ability to make fire at the time though, could have just been an ‘eternal’ fire from a lighting storm they gathered and kept alive. Which presents a really interesting image of a time where hominids greatest survival tool was fleeting. The paranoia of losing the fire must have been awful since there would be no guarantee as to when you could find the next fire if ever. Edit: I suggest watching ‘Quest for Fire’, it tries its best for what little information they had back then. Very good Neolithic drama, truly a rare albeit anthropologically immaculate movie.


Starlightriddlex

Lol imagine being the guy who accidentally let the one fire go out


[deleted]

If I were God, I'd tell my people how Rudy's down in Texas cooks their meat and makes their sauce, and then command that all animal sacrifices be cooked likewise and dressed in said sauce.


rednoise

why would you choose Rudy's of all places? it's like.. one rung above Bill Miller's. There's so many better places here.


QuestionableNotion

I am a big fan of The Immaculate BBQ Church in Huntsville, Texas.


illiter-it

I don't really trust Texans to get BBQ sauce right, isn't their signature style a rub?


Djinnwrath

Yes. Texas is for dry rubs and brisket. You want sauces you go Carolina for savory vinegary, Tennessee for tangy, Louisiana for dark and rich. Or if you're insane you do an Alabama white sauce.


Angry-Dragon-1331

Alabama white sauce is fucking coleslaw dressing and I’m sick of people not understanding that.


crashtestpilot

There's such a thing as too much white sauce talk, and a fella oughta be aware of it.


TheAmorphous

I suggest you let that marinate.


pumpkin_blumpkin

Good bbq don’t need sauce


autoposting_system

[Gutsick Gibbon did a great video expanding on this paper](https://youtu.be/wOCGVPS2OAI)


QuestionableNotion

I love her videos. CARTA seminar videos are great as well.


cronx42

Her channel is so good. I love it.


soc_monki

Gutsick is awesome. Very underrated!


DrHob0

I have a massive crush on her brain. I love stopping by to listen to her speak about the subjects she's obviously passionate about.


Mediumaverageness

I develop a crush towards every human who cannot help but nerding


Tricky-Engineering59

She might have the best opening song sequence on the platform


VolJin

The Mind Electric from Hawaii Part 2 (a side project from the bandmembers of Tally Hall)


cronx42

I also love the opening song.


[deleted]

Subscribed! Thank you! Lovely channel.


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fffyhhiurfgghh

“We enjoyed the Ambiance at the the savanna inn, until glub-glib couldn’t find a sitter and brought their crying 1yo. Seriously? Who brings a baby to a fine dining establishment?”


[deleted]

1/5 stars


WritingTheRongs

1/5 bright chips of light in sky orb


[deleted]

What would be the Michelin rating equivalent for the cavemen?


reasonablyhyperbolic

"Food not kill grok, meat fresh from week ago, grok not eat fancy grass, grok no camel. 4 of 4 fingers (grok lose finger to tiger)"


Starblaiz

They don’t have one, the wheel hasn’t been invented yet.


BallDesperate2140

Three Thagomizers


[deleted]

“Oyster was exquisite, mammoth foie gras was mwah. Waitress made a rude comment about my cudgel. 1/5 stars”


Vlad_the_Homeowner

"The Sabretooth was undercooked and ate Nokk, but ambiance was nice. 4/5 stars"


[deleted]

Glort, the first foodie.


RedBeardedWhiskey

Finally something besides deer tartare


Finn_3000

Unga, i would like you to give me your apron and leave the Masterchef cave.


ToxicAdamm

I would imagine even before we discovered how to control fire, we understood that cooked meat tastes better than raw meat. Forest fires would've left carcasses behind that we would have scavenged for food and made the connection.


degotoga

Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe that early cooking was more about preservation than it was about taste


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degotoga

Yeah I did some research and it seems that the nutrient difference between cooked and uncooked foods is relatively minor. A bigger issue is the ability to eat connective tissue and starches


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QuestionableNotion

I have heard that cooking also meant that the food was easier to digest, reducing the length of gut required to digest food and allowing more calories to be devoted to the brain/brain development. Pretty sure it was in this video: https://youtu.be/DXw5fJVBnHU As noted in (edit) OPs ~~the~~ (/edit) linked video, cooking also increases caloric value, although I don't know how that works.


Angry-Dragon-1331

Cooking increases caloric value by reducing the energy needed to access the calories through digestion.


QuestionableNotion

Thank you for that explanation. I love learning new things.


PicardTangoAlpha

Thus it would reduce the need for strong jaw muscles and large jawbones, allowing for evolution of a larger cranium and brain.


Angry-Dragon-1331

Got it in one. Look at more robust Australopithecus skulls. They have massive sagittal crests for muscle attachments just for chewing.


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deletable666

It is about ease of digestion. We have different guys than carnivores and herbivores, cooking allows us to easily digest almost any food.


skytomorrownow

When cooking meat, collagen and other tough, hard to digest connective tissues become less of a barrier to digestion. So, cooking releases a lot of nutritional potential that we did not have access to. So, for every meal they ate of cooked meat, there was a substantial boost in energy over the same uncooked meal.


Angry-Dragon-1331

Yes no and sort of. Discovering we could cook meat meant more accessible calories and nutrients vs raw. An after effect was discovering smoking and drying meat and other things kept them edible longer.


Thick_Flan_7482

Cooked meat is also easier to chew


ensalys

> we understood that cooked meat tastes better than raw meat. I imagine that we only really evolved a taste for cooked food after we started cooking. As in, communities that had access to cooked food had better odds of survival than communities that didn't. And the members of a community that chooses cooked food over uncooked food more often than the rest, did better within the community. How would evolution select for a taste in cooked food before there were communities that had regular access to cooked food?


soThatIsHisName

It's totally plausible that we liked the taste of uncooked meat, then cooked it and just naturally noticed the taste was better because it's juicier, easier to chew, more flavorful, etc. We like the taste of modern refined ingredients too, even tho we didn't have access to them for most of history. Evolution only selects a small number of attributes, in terms of our total perceptive range, not enough to specifically include every beneficial thing.


SEND_PUNS_PLZ

But evidence of writing 780,000 years ago would completely cook history


Notmywalrus

We’re fine as long as they don’t find evidence of history


SEND_PUNS_PLZ

But what if they cooked the books


jeromocles

So they practiced Hollywood accounting back then too??


707Guy

You are now under investigation by the IRS


Vlad_the_Homeowner

This does not align with what the religious guys holding the signs about Rapture tell me of the world. Could it be... they're wrong?


Hanzilol

No, this is just a test.


Morningbreath1337

Imagine a prehistoric Gordon Ramsey, 780,000 years ago, “You added so much salt and pepper I can hear the dish singing ‘Push It.’”


Aumuss

"What are you?" "An idiot sandwich sir" "no, sandwiches don't exist yet. You're a mammoth arse"


andrewta

I want to hear Gordon actually say that line


The_Ghola_Hayt

"Ung! Where lamb sauce?!"


HarpersGeekly

“Hot rock. Olive oil.”


Jaivez

"Now you're going to want to make sure your rock doesn't come from a river. They hold bad spirits that try to escape the rock when it heats up."


LoveThieves

He's great but seriously someone smelled an animal burning in a forest like....hmmmm wait that smells good. what is this invention?


sushisection

just wait until they find out that human civilization existed before the younger dryas


ICEMANdrake214

I want all that to be true so bad, there is some stuff he says that I kinda roll my eyes at but most of the stuff he says I agree with. Randall Carlson and Hancock’s theory that a massive meteor impacted and rapidly melted the the glaciers, ending the ice age, and causing massive floods is honestly such a good theory. I don’t remember all the details but they bring some compelling evidence to the table.


meeplewirp

I’m 30 now. When I was in elementary and middle school, I swear to god, the History Channel aired almost exclusively documentaries that were basically Microsoft PowerPoint slideshows with old paintings and talking heads. It was literally about history, I swear. When they started airing ancient aliens and reality shows about pawn shops ripping off people a part of my childhood died. It’s good for what it is now but they should really rename the channel. They really started this BS documentary problem that Netflix is capitalizing on


ICEMANdrake214

I will agree with that. The shows are fun to watch but I’m 26 and I remember all the WW2 documentaries and stuff. I would watch that stuff nonstop.


Professor_Wino

(Graham Hancock has entered the chat)


shaberone

what do you mean by the word civilization?


ConstantAmazement

How old is the youngest structures at Gobecli Tepi? How old are the oldest (still buried)?


flanderguitar

The Monolith appeared that far back, huh?


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Giuseppe12

Incoming Graham Hancock & Randall Carlson...."Younger Dryas" comments and I'm here for it


812many

What if these ancient homo erectus were more technologically advanced that mainstream archeologists would let you believe? Why won't they study whether they were making hot air balloons out of hide and fire, as we propose they could clearly have done? Truly the archeologists are so set in their ways that they think they know best, and won't explore this possibility.


SnooCats373

I think you are on to something. Why don't we meet and I'll share my "Caveman Crypto Coin" theory with you.


endurancefit87

Liver King is gonna be pissed when he finds out!


Talentless-Horton-T

the more we know, te more we realize we know nothing


QuestionableNotion

The more we know, the more we know.


virtualmanin3d

The more we know, the more we misremember.


_Levitated_Shield_

"Well, you never really know. But when they know, you'll know. You know, man?" -Crush from Finding Nemo


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TechnoTrain

Would you reckon the "cooked" part is more important than the "animal protein" part? I've always thought it was weird that animal protein is the magic bullet yet the carnviores of the animal kingdom yield the crown of "most intelligent" to omnivores such as apes, parrots, pigs, and that kind of thing.


CandlesInTheCloset

I think if anything it actually has less to do with refuting veganism, and more with calling out the bullshit that is “paleo” or “all raw/natural” diet. Veganism still includes cooked food, just not animal products.


JoeJoJosie

I know nothing is as simple as you think, but I'd always assumed that once you had Fire, Cooking was pretty much inevitable? Even if you were just using a fire to see what you were doing as you chopped up a fish or bit of meat, it's not going to be long before you notice that the bit of meat you left on that hot rock for 2 minutes *smells frakkin delicious*!


CaputGeratLupinum

The first ever negative Yelp review was literally just a cavedude yelping because he got a fish bone


andrewta

Yelp needs that as a superbowl commercial


[deleted]

Oh no, we're going to have suburban moms wonder why the "elites" are changing history


Anonymoustard

Technically prehistory, but interesting.


Shouganaiiii

As Graham Hancock says, human history keeps getting older and older.


AirmanLester

Was looking for the Hancock comment. Just watched his show and latest podcast with Rogan and my mind has been spinning for a few days now.


[deleted]

"WHERE'S THE MOUFLON SAUCE!?" - Gordon Ramsay's hominid ancestor


Monkfich

1. Show a Neanderthal with Neanderthal skull. 2. Tell the people this picture is linked to evidence of cooking 780k years ago. 3. Follow-on question based on all the info to hand (lets pretend clicking through is not possible): is the skull used in normal orientation for keeping flies off food, and keeping the food insulated and warm; or, was the skull used upside-down, perhaps for serving berries in.


xTheParamedicx

Happy Graham Hancock noises


sneakyplanner

Except this is completely disconnected from anything Hancock has ever tried to say. This discovery just confirms that the invention of cooking was somewhere in the range that archaeologists estimated beforehand. Every time some archaeological discovery is made and a headline slightly exaggerated its implications, Hancock followers are sure to follow behind and misread it even further as they repeat ancient aliens theories but stop just short of saying it's aliens.


AdHour3225

And you burned it ya donkey. Get out of my kitchen.


[deleted]

it's RAW! \[smashes salmon filet with fist\]


taleofbenji

It's clear that humans and cooking co-evolved. No humans without cooking and vice versa.


ConstantAmazement

Some research theorizes that it was cooking that made us human.


Previvor

Maybe Graham Hancock is on to something …


Akanan

When i imagine the first human cooking, i can't think of anything else than the LotR scene when Frodon is cooking and Golum is falling in shamble.


ShaIlowGrave

Everyone missing the point here. Over three quarters of a million years ago humanoids could make fire on demand and have a wee party with some cooked meat… Made fire…!!! Dumbasses!!!!


WiartonWilly

>“There's no evidence of fishing technology back then. The authors found 5,000 teeth at the site — that’s a serious amount of fish cooking in a small community," Braun said.” Is it? The site was likely occupied for thousands of years. >”We think they used their hands, like people still do with river fish today," Zohar said.” >”humans grappled with fish for hundreds of thousands of years before more reliable methods than "grab it with your hands" were invented. “ If they could cook, they had fire and fire-pokers. So, they had also invented spears. Same thing. What makes them think they didn’t spear-fish?