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Introduction
Three Years on the Barbecue Trail
Appears in
Published 1998
Half a million years ago, the world witnessed a revolution. An ape-like creature destined to become man became the first animal to cook its dinner. The mastery of fire by Homo erectus around 500,000 B.C. resulted in nothing less than the rise of civilization. Anthropologists have argued that the primitive act of roasting meat over fire ultimately led to language, art, religion, and complex social organization. In other words, you could say that grilling begat civilization.
How our forebears learned to grill remains a matter of speculation. Perhaps the first barbecue was the result of a forest fire, which roasted venison, bison, and other game on the hoof in a natural conflagration. Perhaps a haunch of meat fell into a campfire. Perhaps lightning struck a tree and transformed it into charcoal. In any case, archeological evidence suggests that by 125,000 B.C. man was using live fire to cook his meat and to help him extract from the bones a morsel particularly prized in prehistoric times: marrow.