Food Preparation
<p>There is no clear evidence as to when the practice of cooking food was first conceived. Most <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropologist" title="Anthropologist" class="mw-redirect" >anthropologists</a> believe that cooking fires began only about 250,000 years ago, when <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearth" title="Hearth" >hearths</a> started appearing.<sup id="cite_ref-2" class="reference" ><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking#cite_note-2" >[3]</a></sup><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primatologist" title="Primatologist" class="mw-redirect" >Primatologist</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wrangham" title="Richard Wrangham" >Richard Wrangham</a> suggested that cooking was invented as far back as 1.8 million to 2.3 million years ago.<sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference" ><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking#cite_note-3" >[4]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-guardian_4-0" class="reference" ><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooking#cite_note-guardian-4" >[5]</a></sup> Other researchers believe that cooking was invented as late as 40,000 or 10,000 years ago. Evidence of fire is inconclusive, as wildfires started by lightning-strikes are still common in East Africa and other wild areas, and it is difficult to determine when fire was first used for cooking, as opposed to just being used for warmth or for keeping predators away.</p>
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