Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

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Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
Catching Fire - How Cooking Made Us Human (Profile books).jpg
September 2009 Profile books edition
Author Richard Wrangham
LanguageEnglish
Genre Sociocultural evolution Anthropology
Publisher Profile Books
Publication date
September 2009
Publication placeUK
Media typePrint (Paperback)
Pages320
ISBN 978-1-84668-285-8

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human is a 2009 book by British primatologist Richard Wrangham, published by Profile Books in England, and Basic Books in the US. It argues the hypothesis that cooking food was an essential element in the physiological evolution of human beings. It was shortlisted for the 2010 Samuel Johnson Prize.

Contents

History of the idea

Eighteenth-century writers noted already that "people cooked their meat, rather than eating it raw like animals". Oliver Goldsmith considered that "of all other animals, we spend the least time in eating; this is one of the great distinctions between us and the brute creation". In 1999, Wrangham published the first version of the hypothesis in Current Anthropology. [1] A short outline of the hypothesis was presented by John Allman (2000) [2] presumably based upon Wrangham (1999).

Overview

Humans (species in the genus Homo) are the only animals that cook their food, and Wrangham argues Homo erectus emerged about two million years ago as a result of this unique trait. Cooking had profound evolutionary effects because it increased food efficiency, which allowed human ancestors to spend less time foraging, chewing, and digesting. H. erectus developed a smaller, more efficient digestive tract, which freed up energy to enable larger brain growth. Wrangham also argues that cooking and control of fire generally affected species development by providing warmth and helping to fend off predators, which helped human ancestors adapt to a ground-based lifestyle. Wrangham points out that humans are highly evolved for eating cooked food and cannot maintain reproductive fitness with raw food. [3]

Reception

Positive

Book reviewers gave Catching Fire generally positive reviews. The New York Times called it "a rare thing: a slim book—the text itself is a mere 207 pages—that contains serious science, yet is related in direct, no-nonsense prose", [3] and the Daily Telegraph called it "that rare thing, an exhilarating science book". [4]

Negative

Critics of the cooking hypothesis question whether archaeological evidence supports the view that cooking fires began long enough ago to confirm Wrangham's findings. [5] The traditional explanation is that human ancestors scavenged carcasses for high-quality food that preceded the evolutionary shift to smaller guts and larger brains. [6]

Critics of the hypothesis argue that while a linear increase in brain volume of the genus Homo is seen over time, adding fire control and cooking does not add anything meaningful to the data. Species such as H. ergaster existed with large brain volumes during time periods with little to no evidence of fire for cooking. Little variation exists in the brain sizes of H. erectus dated from periods of weak and strong evidence for cooking. [7] An experiment involving mice fed raw versus cooked meat found that cooking meat did not increase the amount of calories taken up by mice, leading to the study's conclusion that the energetic gain is the same, if not greater, in raw meat diets than cooked meats. [8] Studies such as this and others have led to criticisms of the hypothesis that state that the increases in human brain-size occurred well before the advent of cooking due to a shift away from the consumption of nuts and berries to the consumption of meat. [9] [10] Other anthropologists argue that the evidence suggests that cooking fires began in earnest only 250,000 BP, when ancient hearths, earth ovens, burned animal bones, and flint appear across Europe and the Middle East. [5]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cooking</span> Preparing food using heat

Cooking, also known as cookery or professionally as the culinary arts, is the art, science and craft of using heat to make food more palatable, digestible, nutritious, or safe. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely, from grilling food over an open fire, to using electric stoves, to baking in various types of ovens, reflecting local conditions. Cooking is an aspect of all human societies and a cultural universal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human evolution</span> Evolutionary process leading to anatomically modern humans

Human evolution is the evolutionary process within the history of primates that led to the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species of the hominid family that includes all the great apes. This process involved the gradual development of traits such as human bipedalism, dexterity, and complex language, as well as interbreeding with other hominins, indicating that human evolution was not linear but weblike. The study of the origins of humans involves several scientific disciplines, including physical and evolutionary anthropology, paleontology, and genetics; the field is also known by the terms anthropogeny, anthropogenesis, and anthropogony.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homininae</span> Subfamily of mammals

Homininae, also called "African hominids" or "African apes", is a subfamily of Hominidae. It includes two tribes, with their extant as well as extinct species: 1) the tribe Hominini ―and 2) the tribe Gorillini (gorillas). Alternatively, the genus Pan is sometimes considered to belong to its own third tribe, Panini. Homininae comprises all hominids that arose after orangutans split from the line of great apes. The Homininae cladogram has three main branches, which lead to gorillas and to humans and chimpanzees. There are two living species of Panina and two living species of gorillas, but only one extant human species. Traces of extinct Homo species, including Homo floresiensis have been found with dates as recent as 40,000 years ago. Organisms in this subfamily are described as hominine or hominines.

<i>Homo habilis</i> Archaic human species from 2.8 to 1.65 mya

Homo habilis is an extinct species of archaic human from the Early Pleistocene of East and South Africa about 2.3 million years ago to 1.65 million years ago (mya). Upon species description in 1964, H. habilis was highly contested, with many researchers recommending it be synonymised with Australopithecus africanus, the only other early hominin known at the time, but H. habilis received more recognition as time went on and more relevant discoveries were made. By the 1980s, H. habilis was proposed to have been a human ancestor, directly evolving into Homo erectus, which directly led to modern humans. This viewpoint is now debated. Several specimens with insecure species identification were assigned to H. habilis, leading to arguments for splitting, namely into "H. rudolfensis" and "H. gautengensis" of which only the former has received wide support.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paleolithic</span> Prehistoric period, first part of the Stone Age

The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic, also called the Old Stone Age, is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone tools, and which represents almost the entire period of human prehistoric technology. It extends from the earliest known use of stone tools by hominins, c. 3.3 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene, c. 11,650 cal BP.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peking Man</span> Subspecies of the genus Homo (fossil)

Peking Man is a subspecies of H. erectus which inhabited the Zhoukoudian cave site in modern northern China during the Chibanian. The first fossil, a tooth, was discovered in 1921, and the Zhoukoudian Cave has since then become the most productive H. erectus site in the world. Peking Man was instrumental in the foundation of Chinese anthropology, and fostered an important dialogue between Western and Eastern science for decades to come. The fossils became the centre of anthropological discussion, and were classified as a direct human ancestor, propping up the Out of Asia hypothesis that humans evolved in Asia.

<i>Homo ergaster</i> Extinct species or subspecies of archaic human

Homo ergaster is an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Africa in the Early Pleistocene. Whether H. ergaster constitutes a species of its own or should be subsumed into H. erectus is an ongoing and unresolved dispute within palaeoanthropology. Proponents of synonymisation typically designate H. ergaster as "African Homo erectus" or "Homo erectus ergaster". The name Homo ergaster roughly translates to "working man", a reference to the more advanced tools used by the species in comparison to those of their ancestors. The fossil range of H. ergaster mainly covers the period of 1.7 to 1.4 million years ago, though a broader time range is possible. Though fossils are known from across East and Southern Africa, most H. ergaster fossils have been found along the shores of Lake Turkana in Kenya. There are later African fossils, some younger than 1 million years ago, that indicate long-term anatomical continuity, though it is unclear if they can be formally regarded as H. ergaster specimens. As a chronospecies, H. ergaster may have persisted to as late as 600,000 years ago, when new lineages of Homo arose in Africa.

The Middle Paleolithic is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleolithic in African archeology. The Middle Paleolithic broadly spanned from 300,000 to 50,000 years ago. There are considerable dating differences between regions. The Middle Paleolithic was succeeded by the Upper Paleolithic subdivision which first began between 50,000 and 40,000 years ago. Pettit and White date the Early Middle Paleolithic in Great Britain to about 325,000 to 180,000 years ago, and the Late Middle Paleolithic as about 60,000 to 35,000 years ago. The Middle Paleolithic was in the geological Chibanian and Late Pleistocene ages.

<i>Paranthropus robustus</i> Extinct species of hominin of South Africa

Paranthropus robustus is a species of robust australopithecine from the Early and possibly Middle Pleistocene of the Cradle of Humankind, South Africa, about 2.27 to 0.87 million years ago. It has been identified in Kromdraai, Swartkrans, Sterkfontein, Gondolin, Cooper's, and Drimolen Caves. Discovered in 1938, it was among the first early hominins described, and became the type species for the genus Paranthropus. However, it has been argued by some that Paranthropus is an invalid grouping and synonymous with Australopithecus, so the species is also often classified as Australopithecus robustus.

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Richard Walter Wrangham is an English anthropologist and primatologist; he is Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University. His research and writing have involved ape behavior, human evolution, violence, and cooking.

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The control of fire by early humans was a critical technology enabling the evolution of humans. Fire provided a source of warmth and lighting, protection from predators, a way to create more advanced hunting tools, and a method for cooking food. These cultural advances allowed human geographic dispersal, cultural innovations, and changes to diet and behavior. Additionally, creating fire allowed human activity to continue into the dark and colder hours of the evening.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Self-domestication</span> Scientific hypothesis in ethnobiology

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hominidae</span> Family of primates

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The diet of known human ancestors varies dramatically over time. Strictly speaking, according to evolutionary anthropologists and archaeologists, there is not a single hominin Paleolithic diet. The Paleolithic covers roughly 2.8 million years, concurrent with the Pleistocene, and includes multiple human ancestors with their own evolutionary and technological adaptations living in a wide variety of environments. This fact with the difficulty of finding conclusive evidence often makes broad generalizations of the earlier human diets very difficult. Humans' pre-hominin primate ancestors were broadly herbivorous, relying on either foliage or fruits and nuts and the shift in dietary breadth during the Paleolithic is often considered a critical point in hominin evolution. A generalization between Paleolithic diets of the various human ancestors that many anthropologists do make is that they are all to one degree or another omnivorous and are inextricably linked with tool use and new technologies.

References

  1. Wrangham, Richard W.; Jones, James Holland; Laden, Greg; Pilbeam, David; Conklin‐Brittain, NancyLou (Dec 1999). "The Raw and the Stolen". Current Anthropology. 40 (5): 567–594. doi:10.1086/300083. ISSN   0011-3204. PMID   10539941. S2CID   82271116.
  2. John Allman (2000) Evolving Brains, Scientific American Library, page 194.
  3. 1 2 Garner, Dwight (2009-05-26). "Why Are Humans Different From All Other Apes? It's the Cooking, Stupid". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2024-06-12.
  4. "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham: review". The Telegraph. 2009-10-04. Retrieved 2024-06-12.
  5. 1 2 Pennisi, Elizabeth (March 26, 1999). "Human evolution: Did Cooked Tubers Spur the Evolution of Big Brains?". Science . 283 (5410): 2004–2005. doi:10.1126/science.283.5410.2004. PMID   10206901. S2CID   39775701. Archived from the original on 2011-03-10.
  6. Pennisi: Did Cooked Tubers Spur the Evolution of Big Brains? Archived March 10, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  7. Gowlett, J. a. J. (5 June 2016). "The discovery of fire by humans: a long and convoluted process". Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. 371 (1696): 20150164. doi:10.1098/rstb.2015.0164. ISSN   0962-8436. PMC   4874402 . PMID   27216521.
  8. Cornélio, Alianda; et al. (2016). "Human Brain Expansion during Evolution Is Independent of Fire Control and Cooking". Frontiers in Neuroscience. 10: 167. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2016.00167 . PMC   4842772 . PMID   27199631.
  9. "Meat-eating was essential for human evolution, says UC Berkeley anthropologist specializing in diet". 14 June 1999. Retrieved 6 December 2010.
  10. Mann, Neil (15 August 2007). "Meat in the human diet: An anthropological perspective". Nutrition & Dietetics. 64 (Supplement s4): 102–107. doi: 10.1111/j.1747-0080.2007.00194.x .

Further reading