Fresh or preserved foods? When did we start preserving?

Food has been preserved since prehistoric times.
A recent discovery at an archaeological site in Israel has provided evidence that anatomically modern humans (four hundred thousand years ago) regularly engaged in hunting, followed by butchering animals, sharing food, and subsequent cooking, also documenting the earliest evidence of bone preservation for later consumption, likely extending up to nine weeks.

Who has never seen a dog burying its bone in the garden so that (instinctive memory) it can retrieve it in case of food scarcity?
But there are many animals that have the instinct and habit of storing food: squirrels with nuts and acorns, ants with their seeds and grains.
We learn from animals, and we do it again as human beings, that preservation can help make some meats or fruits edible or even valuable: consider a beautiful pork leg that, when aged carefully and for a long time, transforms into excellent ham; or think of a good aged cheese.

Consider also the aging of meat that makes it more tender and flavorful, and the preservation of dehydrated vegetables.
And animals are no less: ants collect fragments of leaves, which are immediately inedible, and store them so that time and molds transform them into edible food.

Therefore, proper storage can be useful and convenient, to transform or maintain the organoleptic and sensory characteristics of a food for as long as possible, allowing it to be consumed safely after some time.

However, please remember that proper storage must eliminate or minimize biological risk, that is, the proliferation of bacteria and microorganisms that can cause infections and poisoning.

Source: online newspaper "Il Fatto Alimentare"