If fire was being used 900,000 years ago why did it take until 10,000 years ago or so to start cities and cultivation and the like? It seems they (Neanderthals/Humans) must have realized what was going on by the point.
#10 It was Aliens.
They dropped by to visit about 10,000years ago.
* we think that a hunter-gatherer's lifestyle is short,brutish and disease-ridden, whereas the opposite is more apt --> Khoi-san hunter-gatherers need to "work" only about 6 hours per day and that includes 3 hours of hunting and 3 hours of preparing hunting tools, planning etc. The rest of the time is leisure. Ditto for their women, work time is 6 to 7 hours daily. AND they live in a desert region. Imagine hunter-gatherers in places with more game - work time could be as little as 4 hours daily. Agriculture workers and farmer had to toil more than 8 hours daily for the same nutrition levels
Also note that hunter gatherers in Europe during the Neolithic period were 5'10" (male) and 5'6" on average while during the middle ages this was 5'5" and 5'.
If you have easily available game, you can also gatehr wild vegetables or do basic horticulture like eat good melons at spot A, toss the seeds around, tear up the weeds and come back to the same place next year. There is no point in settling down in this case (which is why Japan got cities relatively late).
As for fire - that makes sense - you cook the meat and veggies and they are easier to digest, you find you are more energetic (as you can digest more nutrients)
If fire was being used 900,000 years ago why did it take until 10,000 years ago or so to start cities and cultivation and the like?
...
Look at modern day Democrats and extrapolate.
Agriculture
Most of the time that Neandertal is known to have been around (apart from all of us who carry our Neandertal ancestry in our DNA) the continental shelf was exposed due to glaciation and lower sealevel. That's where they had their settlements.