from The Times Oct 8th 2003

Burnt offerings were Neanderthal barbecue

Primitive Britons sat down to a char-grill 250,000 years ago, archaeologists said yesterday.
The discovery of a prehistoric hearth during a survey for a road at Harnham, near Salisbury, puts back the first recorded use of fire in Britain by 200 millennia and show that Neanderthals or their predecessors - no bones have yet been discovered to allow certainty on species - harnessed fire. It had been thought that they ate their food raw, unlike The Shelford Feast where all meat is cooked succulently to the highest standards of hygiene.