Catching Fire

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham, Basic Books, 2010. 

Cooking Food Increases Calories Absorbed

Cooking was a major step on the path to being fully human. Cooking food is important, because cooked food is easier to digest, and the body can absorb more calories from cooked food than from raw food.

Roots versus Leaves

As we evolved and moved out of the trees, our diet changed from leaves to roots. Roots provide more calories than leaves. This change in diet happened about 3 million years ago with the transition from the genus Australopithecus to the genus Paranthropus.  

Body Hair

Cooking implies the ability to make fire. Fire was also used to keep warm at night. Once we had fire to keep us warm at night, we started to lose our body hair.

Homo erectus

It was not our species, Homo sapiens, that discovered how to make fire and use it for cooking, but rather our ancestor, Homo erectus. Homo erectus (1.9 million years ago) was the first species to cook meat. The predecessors of  Homo erectus, Homo habilis (2.5 million years ago) ate meat, but did not cook it. 

Anatomical Changes

Compared to apes, humans have small mouths, small teeth and weaker jaw muscles. As humans have evolved, their teeth and jaws have shrunk, and the alimentary canal has shortened. Brains need a lot of energy, so cooking, which releases more calories, was a necessary step in our becoming more intelligent. 

Origin of the Family

A male needs a woman to do the cooking, while he is out hunting. The author sees this as a major reason for the formation of the family.