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Yes, it could be. Anything could be, given the timelines and scant evidence we are dealing with. But, as I understand it, the evidence points strongly to fire being the main catalyst to the sudden leaps we made in brain volume and cognitive capacity. Australopithecines were scavenging meat for a long time without any marked increase in brain size. The increase seemed to have happened quite abruptly, in terms of evolutionary time, coinciding with climate/habitat instability. Fire harnessing also happened around this time, which is probably the singular thing that allowed any of the non-arboreal hominids to survive, given how erratic the environmental conditions were. Being adapted to forest-savannah edges that were commonplace in a humid climate, but with those habitats effectively disappearing at a rapid pace, there would have been sufficient pressure to cause extinction in even the most robust of species. And this is exactly what occurred for most of the hominid species existing at that time. The things that existed to eat in the newly forming dominant habitat were mostly comprised of roots and arid-environment animal species, as we see in the Kung and San habitats of present day Africa. Fruits and shoots became so scarce that there was basically a non-existent environmental carrying capacity for any kind of primate. Unless they had fire, that is. Then and only then did such landscapes become habitable for our ancestors. It was basically live in the new non-primate habitat with fire, or perish. There is a documentary out there on this entire subject, although the title escapes me at the moment.