I simply do not get it. Why did man come up with the solution to barbeque his food. The prehistoric human that is. Did he get ill from eating raw food, perhaps. But why would he try cooking it? It makes no sense really, unless it was trial and error, and i do not wish to think that it was a coincidence. If the food tastes better then sure, but why did he cook it in the first place to see if it tasted better? Did the prehistoric man get ill from eating raw meat? And why did he begin to cook his food? Those are basically my questions. Anyone have the answer to those questions?
Just to clear up a very minor point, "barbecuing" isn't the word you want. That's a certain form of cooking that involves the use of specific sauces. The real word you want is "roasting." No one knows for sure, of course, but the most accurate guess IS that it was accidental. Food was a very high priority in life at that time and was seldom wasted. If they happened to find an animal that had died in a forest fire, they probably ate it and discovered that it not only tasted better but was more tender as well. All of that seems perfectly reasonable to me.
yes, it does. and i hate it. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! for reasons i intend to disclose in about 4 months when my project is finished. Although i believe you to be correct, i have not reached any different conclusion myself. But could there be any underlying logic for roasting meat? I doubt that there was, but if an newborn child has been put in isolation in the forest, feeded until he is old enough to hunt and cut down trees by himself. Do you suppose he would come up with the solution to roast his meat? And how and why would this occur? Any thoughts?
Agree. Another explanation might be that when the weather was very cold the meat would have frozen or chilled solid by the time it was taken back to camp, so they thought of throwing it in the fire to warm it up and then realised the benefits of doing that.
I agree with Light. Accidental discovery seems to be the most plausable explanation. And perhaps those who cooked their food were less likely to become ill, and as a result more likely to survive longer to pass this skill on, etc., we all know the nuances of evolution. It is also possible that unpalatable foods became more desirable when cooked.
Perhaps, but i am looking for a reason, a trigger for this behaviour. And thanks to tablariddim it might have been discovered. Brilliant. Other suggestions are of course welcome.
Maybe i should tell you that i am a AI researcher, and therefore i cannot rely on trial and error, i need a underlying reason to exist even if it is not a must for an entity behave in that particular way. I am not really trying to find out why Humans began roasting their meat, merely what kind of underlying logic would be neccesary to replicate a similar behaviour in a simulation.
Absolutely! Though it might not be what you would consider a LOT longer, it does help considerably. Raw meat is covered in microbes that are already attacking it and will quickly lead to spoilage - particulary in warm, damp conditions. Cooking kills almost all of them if done properly.
Then you face a tremendous hurdle, as do all members of your profession. Because practically everything of any major importance that's been discovered has been through the randomness of trial and error and pure happenstance.
Cooking one's kills takes much longer, especially if limited to very primitive means of making fire. And would ancient man prepare his meat prior to cooking? Perhaps the prehistorics tried using meat as a source of fuel? Unlikely, I admit!
Yes, indeed. Although i consider my theories and models to be far superior to current AI methodology i cannot rule out the occurrence of "random inventions". This is of course nothing i could ever reproduce.
Precisely. But it must be said it is very difficult to come up with another reason why perfectly good raw food would be deliberately burned. Possibly in an attempt to remove fur or feathers without skinning?.
Yet another feasible suggestion. This might of course be the case, although did not the humans begin eating meat because of the cold climate that covered the world that prevented berries from growing? Therefore it sounds likely that they could find frozen animals, that they had to defrost like tablariddim suggested.
Necessity is the mother of invention, so the motivation to cook it might have been a neccesity as in the case of the meat being too cold to eat raw, but some of the brightest inventions happen entirely by accident, so it could have been the case that the meat simply fell into the fire by accident and by the time it was discovered it had cooked. It is our propensity to make mistakes that eventually prove to be inspired ideas, which sets us apart from AI, which is presumably programmed Not to make mistakes, we also learn from our mistakes, so, perhaps this might be a key element that AI needs, to be more successful.
