A Reasonable, but Incomplete, Account of How Humans Mastered Fire

In a recent article, "The discovery of fire by humans: a long and convoluted process," J. A. J. Gowlett cites Darwin's view that the discovery of fire was second in importance only to the discovery of language. He argues that the advances derived from man's mastery of fire over the later Pleistocene played a critical role in our biological evolution and in the development of our first primitive technologies.

He speculates that the increased nutritive value of cooked food, which followed fro...