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Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, by Richard Wrangham
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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.
- Sales Rank: #6332925 in Books
- Published on: 2009
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.17" h x .98" w x 6.02" l,
- Binding: Paperback
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Contrary to the dogmas of raw-foods enthusiasts, cooked cuisine was central to the biological and social evolution of humanity, argues this fascinating study. Harvard biological anthropologist Wrangham (Demonic Males) dates the breakthrough in human evolution to a moment 1.8 million years ago, when, he conjectures, our forebears tamed fire and began cooking. Starting with Homo erectus—who should perhaps be renamed Homo gastronomicus—these innovations drove anatomical and physiological changes that make us adapted to eating cooked food the way cows are adapted to eating grass. By making food more digestible and easier to extract energy from, Wrangham reasons, cooking enabled hominids' jaws, teeth and guts to shrink, freeing up calories to fuel their expanding brains. It also gave rise to pair bonding and table manners, and liberated mankind from the drudgery of chewing (while chaining womankind to the stove). Wrangham's lucid, accessible treatise ranges across nutritional science, paleontology and studies of ape behavior and hunter-gatherer societies; the result is a tour de force of natural history and a profound analysis of cooking's role in daily life. More than that, Wrangham offers a provocative take on evolution—suggesting that, rather than humans creating civilized technology, civilized technology created us. (June)
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Review
Publishers Weekly
“[A] fascinating study… Wrangham's lucid, accessible treatise ranges across nutritional science, Paleontology and studies of ape behavior and hunter-gatherer societies; the result is a tour de force of natural history and a profound analysis of cooking's role in daily life.”
Publishers Weekly, starred review
“[A] fascinating study… Wrangham’s lucid, accessible treatise ranges across nutritional science, paleontology and studies of ape behavior and hunter-gatherer societies; the result is a tour de force of natural history and a profound analysis of cooking’s role in daily life.”
Kirkus Reviews
“An innovative argument that cooked food led to the rise of modern Homo sapiens.... Experts will debate Wrangham’s thesis, but most readers will be convinced by this lucid, simulating foray into popular anthropology.”
The Harvard Brain
“With clear and engaging prose, Catching Fire addresses a key and enduring scientific issue central to the quest to understand our species. It offers new insights for anyone interested in human evolution, history, anthropology, nutrition, and for everyone interested in food."
Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University
“In this thoroughly researched and marvelously well written book, Richard Wrangham has convincingly supplied a missing piece in the evolutionary origin of humanity.”
Matt Ridley, author of Genome and The Agile Gene
“Cooking completely transformed the human race, allowing us to live on the ground, develop bigger brains and smaller mouths, and invent specialized sex roles. This notion is surprising, fresh and, in the hands of Richard Wrangham, utterly persuasive. He brings to bear evidence from chimpanzees, fossils, food labs, and dieticians. Big, new ideas do not come along often in evolution these days, but this is one.”
Steven Raichlen, author of The Barbecue Bible and How to Grill; host of Primal Grill
“A book of startling originality and breathtaking erudition. Drawing on disciplines as diverse as anthropology, sociology, biology, chemistry, physics, literature, nutrition, and cooking, Richard Wrangham addresses two simple but very profound questions: How did we evolve from Australopithecus to Homo sapiens, and what makes us human? The answer can be found at your barbecue grill and I dare say it will surprise you…”
Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's Dilemma
“Catching Fire is convincing in argument and impressive in its explanatory power. A rich and important book.”
Seed Magazine
“…makes a convincing case for the importance of cooking in the human diet, finding a connection between our need to eat cooked food in order to survive and our preference for soft foods. The popularity of Wonderbread, the digestion of actual lumps of meat, and the dangers of indulging our taste buds all feature in this expository romp through our gustatory evolution.”
Discover Magazine
“…fascinating…”
The New York Times
“‘Catching Fire’ is a plain-spoken and thoroughly gripping scientific essay that presents nothing less than a new theory of human evolution...one that Darwin (among others) simply missed.”
Slate.com
“Brilliant… a fantastically weird way of looking at evolutionary change.”
The San Francisco Chronicle
“As new angles go, it's pretty much unbeatable.”
The Washington Post
“Wrangham draws together previous studies and theories from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, biology, chemistry, sociology and literature into a cogent and compelling argument.”
Texas Observer
“Wrangham’s attention to the most subtle of behaviors keeps the reader enrapt…a compelling picture, and one that I now contemplate every time I turn on my stove."
Providence Journal
“Richard Wrangham presents this thesis in a concise, cogent, and accessible way.”
The New York Times Book Review
“A new theory of human evolution – ‘the cooking hypothesis’ – is related in plain-spoken, gripping language.”
About the Author
Richard Wrangham is the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University and Curator of Primate Behavioral Biology at the Peabody Museum. He is the co-author of Demonic Males and co-editor of Chimpanzee Cultures. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
While I did enjoy reading Dr
By Brian A. Sparr
Dr. Richard Wrangham, renowned primatologist and Ruth B. Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University, goes against the grain in this book with his assertion that the advent of preparing cooked meals, not merely increasing amounts of meat consumed, is the genesis of the list of extraordinary traits our ancient ancestors acquired over the last 2 million years that eventually gave rise to us, Homo sapiens.
Drawing on a number of food studies, ethnographic data, as well as his own primatological research, Dr. Wrangham argues that the transition from Homo habilis to Homo erectus would be impossible without a regular supply of cooked food. Citing the general unpalatability and undigestibility of a chimp's diet for modern humans, the seeming energy deficit seen in raw food proponents, the chemical changes that occur in foods that are cooked and the subsequent absorption of the unlocked calories, and the increasing reduction of our early ancestors' gastrointestinal tract through the millennia, he is convinced that the utilization of fire for cooking has its origins much farther in the past than the current evidence from the archaeological record tells us. The discrepancy between the archaeological record and his claim is around 1 million years, an incredibly large gap to bridge. In the latter third of the book, Wrangham makes the tangential argument that cooking is also what spurred our cultural evolution, e.g., concepts such as pair-bonding and the sexual division of labor, through the creation of a sort of "protection racket" that guards women from food thieves and ensures men a ready supply of food.
While I did enjoy reading Dr. Wrangham's book and readily admit that he makes some interesting and valid points, I am not convinced of the veracity of his hypothesis, especially in the light of more recent research on the variability and actions of the microbiome present in the digestive tracts of animals. In presenting his case for the need of cooked food for an increased energy supply in late habilines/early erectus, he ignores the fact that much of the successive change in the musculoskeletal morphology leading to our species had the effect of allowing us to conserve energy through increased efficiency of movement.
This does not necessarily mean that Dr. Wrangham is incorrect. However, the gaps in his arguments, coupled with the gaps in our own knowledge, have effectively rendered the cooking hypothesis unfalsifiable. There very well may come a time when the available physical evidence supports his position, but for now the only appropriate response is one of interest, skepticism, and further research.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Definitely worth a read
By bill gonch
This is really a good book on an important topic that just does not get much coverage: the anthropology of food. Now, there are quite a few people who express theories on what made us human and what our distant ancestors ate. Wrangham is one of the few who combines the two topics.
Put briefly that major points of his argument are as follows. The emergence of humans in their modern form (still an imperfect work in progress. in my humble opinion) requires that we explain a couple of tricky things. One is the physiological changes that separate us from earlier species of hominid and from other primates. Another thing to be explained is the set of cultural changes. The thread Wrangham traces has to do with cooking as a central nexus.
Unfortunately, campfires do not fossilize well, so it is kind of hard to get comprehensive evidence. On the other hand, Wrangham cites good circumstantial evidence that the human mastery of fire (and with it cooking) started during the time of homo erectus, about 1.9 million years ago. One of the things that cooking does as increase the availability of nutrients in food. (It also makes it taste better). The connection Wrangham draws is enabled a process where are guts got smaller and our brains got bigger. The two are connected because the energy to power a bigger brain had to come from somewhere and most of the other organs in the body just could not be cut back by much. Cooking also has an inherent social component (or at least it did until we decided to outsource it to corporations), That provides a hook for the argument of cultural changes.
While anthropology is a science, it is a social science. I doubt it will ever be a science in the same sense as physics. Any argument like Wrangham's will always be vulnerable to the Gouldian argument of providing a "just so story." That said Wrangham provides us with a well researched argument and an extremely well written and interesting book. Strongly recommended.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Wonderful, Orignial, Must-Read
By Nathan White
I can't think of any better science writing than this. Truly an incredible accomplishment, Catching Fire is filled with incredibly thought-provoking ideas. I can tell that Richard Wrangham is fascinated by our early origins, if only by the incredible depth of his research for every chapter. Like the best of scientists, Wrangham argues firmly for a bold hypothesis by submitting it to harsh scrutiny. With every chapter he works into the details and consequences of cooking and fire, and his analyses show his keen observational skills and attention to detail present in all great scientists. The Epilogue comes as a wonderful surprise and reveals that in addition to scholarly research, the book is ultimately polemic. And after the beautifully crafted argument and delivery that precedes it, his points are impossible to ignore. In conclusion, WOW.
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