The emergence of cooking in Southwest Asia

There has been surprisingly little systematic study by prehistorians of how in the distant past people cooked and consumed food. There are many unanswered questions. For example, how did cooking emerge and affect human evolution, how did it change with the advent of farming, when did kitchens first appear and who built the earliest known ovens? Research on Palaeolithic and Neolithic food preparation and consumption is now beginning to suggest answers to such questions