My understanding was controllable fire predated anatomically modern humans. I remember one theory that basically said using fire allowed modern humans to evolve with a larger brain because fire aided digestion.
I heard this theory as well, in a history of science class. The professor claimed that you can extract something like 60% more food energy from an egg by cooking it.
PS: Seems to be up in the air: Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of control of fire by a member of Homo range from 0.2 to 1.7 million years ago (Mya).[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_fire_by_early_humans Note: Homo erectus is fiarly diffrent from Homo sapiens. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus