Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

Product Details

Ever since Darwin and The Descent of Man, the existence of humans has been attributed to our intelligence and adaptability. But in Catching Fire, renowned primatologist Richard Wrangham presents a startling alternative: our evolutionary success is the result of cooking. In a groundbreaking theory of our origins, Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the key factor in human evolution. When our ancestors adapted to using fire, humanity began. Once our hominid ancestors began cooking their food, the human digestive tract shrank and the brain grew. Time once spent chewing tough raw food could be sued instead to hunt and to tend camp. Cooking became the basis for pair bonding and marriage, created the household, and even led to a sexual division of labor. Tracing the contemporary implications of our ancestors’ diets, Catching Fire sheds new light on how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today. A pathbreaking new theory of human evolution, Catching Fire will provoke controversy and fascinate anyone interested in our ancient origins—or in our modern eating habits.

• ISBN13: 9780465013623
• Condition: USED - GOOD
• Notes:

Customer Reviews ::

Bon appetit! - D. J. Nardi - Washington, DC
When I used to to Benihana's Japanese restaurant, I used to think those big grills with all of that fire was just for show. Apparently not. According to Richard Wrangham, cooking doesn't just make raw meat taste better, but also has enabled many of the most important advances in human evolution.

There are several key points in Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. First, cooking food softens it, enabling humans to spend less time chewing and digesting food - and thus more time pursuing other activities. Second, less difficulty digesting food means the human body can dedicate less energy to the gut and more to brains (human brains are abnormally large, and human guts abnormally small). Finally, cooking had social impacts that reduced the time for gathering food, leading to a division of labor and gender inequality.

I found Wrangham's arguments fascinating, but never felt like he "proved" his hypothesis. Much of his evidence is anecdotal. The one thing I still didn't understand is whether he thought cooking or the biological changes in humans evolved first (the chicken and egg problem). I suspect the former, but the exact sequence is unclear. However, the thesis seems to suggest that cooking led to larger brains. This implies that humanity mastered fire before evolving human brains. If this is true, then why have other animals not harness fire?

Some of these sequencing issues left me a bit uncertain about whether cooking really was THE trait that made us human. Nonetheless, the issues discussed in Catching Fire are fascinating and will change the way you look at dinner.