I've recently purchased a charcoal grill. The only food I've cooked on it thus far has been burgers, but each resulting meal has been spectacular enough that I'm completely content with the purchase. I'm no longer able to safely eat takeout burgers due to the unavoidable risk of gluten contamination, and if you've ever tried cooking hamburgers on a stainless steel stovetop skillet you'll know that the cook is challenging and the results often leave much to be desired—or at least that was the case when I would try. Of all the ways I've cooked burgers in my life, charcoal grilling has easily yielded the best, most delicious results.
I am not an outdoorsy person—I generally just dislike the experience of being outside. That is probably the reason why my sister told me I'm the last person she'd have ever expected to buy and use a charcoal grill. Despite this, I've quickly taken to liking it. I also don't think the superior taste of the food is the entire reason—or rather, I think the perceived superior taste actually makes sense when viewing the activity through a specific lens.
Have you ever looked at a fireplace or a campfire? Have you ever gazed into flames and found yourself captivated by the sight? Have you ever enjoyed the smell of a campfire as you've sat close? Maybe not, but the benefits of staring into one are well-known.
Heart and campfire influences on arterial blood pressure (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
The study linked above also notes that fire's relaxation effects are enhanced in social settings and that fire tending behaviours are also linked to prosocial beliefs.
While there are many things which only humans do, controlling fire is certainly among the oldest. Specifically, controlled fire predates the modern homo sapiens as well as the neanderthal, and even homo erectus. We have evolved substantially since we began to control fire, but I understand that the universal use of fire by a species arrived with us—homo sapiens—specifically.
Cooking was likely the impetus for our ancestors to begin experimenting with fire in the first place—we would have found both burned and undercooked food in the wake of wildfires, and enterprising proto-sapiens would have eventually experimented with removing food from fires to determine adequate cook times.
As with the discovery of foods at various stages of cooking, the discovery of charcoal in the wake of wildfires almost certainly motivated humans to try burning it and learning of its potential as a fuel for very hot fires in order to cook more easily. In service of making fire, we would eventually learn to manufacture our own charcoal as well.
When done correctly, the cooking process eliminates pathogens and parasites. Food that wasn't a vector for deadly or debilitating disease allowed our ancestors to survive more easily compared to those hominids which avoided the practice. In turn, any mutations which made someone more inclined to eat cooked food would have been preferentially selected in the process of our evolution into homo sapiens.
Today, humans generally prefer to eat well-cooked foods. Well, what is a well-cooked food but a food that is cooked enough to be safe to eat while still not having been overcooked to the point of losing all flavour? Our ancestors' attempts to strike that balance would have almost certainly influenced the ways we experience taste today. It is also understood among afficionados that charcoal grilling results in better tasting food, which is a little odd if you think about it. Why would coating a cooked ground beef patty in a thin layer of carbonized wood particulates make it taste so much better? If charcoal was used as a fuel far enough back in time, there's your answer.
All of this culminates in what I have found most peculiar about learning to cook food on a charcoal grill: It is easier than you'd expect. The act itself would be passive enough to bore me were it not for the constant smell of charcoal smoke that keeps my mind firmly fixated on the cook. Though I always confirm with a meat thermometer, cooked food intuitively looks cooked once it is done. Is this ease, too, a result of evolution? I would not be surprised.
Still, in this entire endeavour I can't help but think about how uniquely human this specific activity is. In maintaining this practice I feel grateful for the hundreds of thousands of years of unwritten history where we mastered a technology that would eventually allow us to become what we are today.
Also, I really missed eating good burgers.