Veggie stew was on the menu even 10,000 years ago

Humans used ceramic pots to cook plants more than 10,000 years ago, well before the advent of agriculture, researchers reported Monday. The findings are the earliest direct proof that our species processed plants for food. The vessels, discovered in Libya, contained wild grasses as well as the leaves and fruit from fig trees, and the family of plants that includes cinnamon, nutmeg and star anise.

Learning to cook was crucial to human evolution. It broadened our diet and made available new sources of energy. Many of the plants discovered would have been poisonous or indigestible eaten raw. No one knows exactly when our ancestors began to roast meat over an open fire, but the first heatresistant ceramic vessels date from about 15,000 years ago.

Evidence that they were used soon after that to boil animal products — whether meat or milk — is abundant. However, telltale chemical traces in cookware that wild plants were prepared in the same way, have been lacking.

“Until now, the importance of plants in prehistoric diets has been under-recognised,” said lead author Julie Dunne, a

researcher at the University of Bristol in England.

The study was published in the journal Nature Plants. It analysed 110 pot fragments discovered at two sites in the Libyan Sahara — which would have been lush and oasis-like at the time — called Takarkori and Uan Afuda. The Takarkori rock shelter is one of the few sites which records the transition from huntergatherers, who thrived from about 8200 BC to 6400 BC, to plant domestication and agriculture.

LEARNING TO COOK WAS CRUCIAL TO HUMAN EVOLUTION. IT BROADENED OUR DIET AND MADE AVAILABLE NEW SOURCES OF ENERGY

PHOTO: ISTOCK