> By this logic, the use of fire for cooking is "some kind of hormones or evolution thing", not culture.
That's not impossible at this point: humans don't fare that well on completely raw diet with studies of raw vegan diets show increases in amenorrhoea, underweightness, dental erosion and lower bone densities (raw non-vegan diet being possibly even riskier due to high concerns of food poisoning and food-borne diseases). Richard Wrangham has argued that modern humans are in fact obligate cooks (though he's also argued that modern human evolution was triggered by cooking, I know most anthropologists disagree with the latter, not sure about the former, could be an interesting question to ask in /r/askscience)
OK, but if you raise a group of people somewhere in the middle of nowhere on 100% raw food, I'd hazard the guess that they'll sooner die of malnutrition or diseases than instinctively approach some fire and start cooking.
And if this isn't culture then I don't know what is.
That's not impossible at this point: humans don't fare that well on completely raw diet with studies of raw vegan diets show increases in amenorrhoea, underweightness, dental erosion and lower bone densities (raw non-vegan diet being possibly even riskier due to high concerns of food poisoning and food-borne diseases). Richard Wrangham has argued that modern humans are in fact obligate cooks (though he's also argued that modern human evolution was triggered by cooking, I know most anthropologists disagree with the latter, not sure about the former, could be an interesting question to ask in /r/askscience)