From, uh, 2013.<p>And the book, <i>Catching Fire</i>, mentioned in the article and from which most of the info is gleaned is from 2010. The scholar in the article, Richard Wrangham, wrote the book.<p><i>Sapiens</i> by Yuval Noah Harari doesn't push the domestication of fire as far back as 1.8 million years as Wrangham does but it does note that the chimpanzee brain uses 6% of the body's energy at rest, while according to the article "A human body at rest devotes roughly one-fifth of its energy to the brain". The hypothesis is that only cooking could have provided this boost. Shorter gut, bigger brain. It's a fascinating conjecture. The question is, did we develop sophisticated language before domesticating fire or vice-versa. Perhaps the synthesised creation myths of all the world's cultures and religions could provide a clue?