Humans tamed fire around 1.7 million years ago. But when humans started cooking and frying remained a controversial topic for a very long time. In 2022, Israeli archaeologists discovered the remains of charred carp at the site called Gesher Benot Ya’aqov near the banks of the Jordan. The remains prove that humans had already prepared food with fire 780,000 years ago.

How the fish were caught remains unclear. No wooden fishing rods, string or nets have survived.

In 2024, British and German archaeologists found a stone slab at the Gönnersdorf site near Neuwied am Rhein, in the German state of Rheinland-Pfalz. The stone slab shows fish in a net. The stone slab provides evidence that humans had already fished with nets 15,800 years ago. At the same time, this is the oldest illustration of fishing.

Source

Irit Zohar, Nira Alperson Afil, Naama Goren Inbar, Marion Prevost, Thomas Tütken, Guy Sisma Ventura, Israel Hershkovitz, Jens Najorka, Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago at Gesher Benot Ya aqov Israel, Nature Ecology and Evolution, Volume 6, 14. 11. 2022.

Jérôme Robitaille, Lisa-Elen Meyering, Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser, Paul Pettitt, Olaf Jöris, Robert Kentridge, Upper Palaeolithic fishing techniques: Insights from the engraved plaquettes of the Magdalenian site of Gönnersdorf, Germany, Plos ONE, 6. 11. 2024.