Did our ancestors start cooking to make carrion safe to eat?

 Early humans may have first started cooking their food to make carrion safer for them to eat, new research has suggested.

Anthropologists at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have found humans scavenging for meat from carrion would risked exposure to dangerously high levels of bacteria.

They claim that simply roasting meat on hot coals can kill most of the bacteria that grows on carrion, making it safer for human consumption.

This they say could have helped to transform the diet of early humans, allowing them to access a rich supply of meat long before the development of weapons made hunting more efficient.

The findings provide strong support for theories that early humans obtained much of their meat by scavenging the kills of other predators.

The research was led by Professor Richard Wrangham, from the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University.

Writing in the Journal of Human Evolution, Professor Wrangham and his colleagues said: 'Meat scavenged by early Homo could have contributed importantly to a higher quality diet. [...] dailymail.co.uk/