South Africa has found the oldest evidence of human cooking starch.

A new study published in the Journal of Human Evolution by british
,
German
and South African archaeologists suggests the earliest archaeological evidence that modern humans in the anatomical sense had hot
processed
food and eaten plants
stration
120,000 years ago.
based on the discovery of caves along the Indian Ocean coast near the Krassis River in South Africa's Eastern Cape province. The cave sediments are 20 meters high, and the findings cover a time span of 55,000 to 12,000 years ago. Artifacts found there include stone and bone, animal bones and shells, and more than 40 bones of people living in caves. Some bones look the same as those of modern Homo homo homo science, while others show older features. Cave dwellers hunt antelopes, seals and penguins and pick up mums. It is estimated that caves are not their permanent place of residence, and that ancient hunters did not stay here for weeks on time, perhaps because of their frequent migrations. The oldest and most famous evidence of the same kind was found in these caves: violent human bone fragments in food residues.
researchers studied small (about 30 cm in diameter) fires in caves on the Krassis River. In charred food particles, fragments of plant thin-walled tissue (storage tissue for plant tubers, scales and root deposits of starch) were identified. Cynthia Larbey, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge, said the results could prove the earliest archaeological evidence geneticists had previously assumed. Scientists previously hypothesed that the double of genes associated with human starch division about 300,000 years ago led to an increase in the proportion of plant starch in the diet.