Dung was used for fuel, even in cooking. Heat treatment/curing of dung made possible dung-based wattle-and-daub housing, which solved waste disposal I suppose.
Yeah, I recalled wrong. What I was misremembering was the possible use of dung in much later ceramics.
They’d have to find organic samples in a very narrow range of deposits to be able to identify what was used for cooking so long ago.
But I can see the lower cooking temperatures achieved over a hot coal spit even >500k years ago without the higher temp direct flame effects on the teeth. I seriously doubt that indirect heat stone hearths were developed so early.
https://archive.archaeology.org/9711/newsbriefs/hearth.html