{"id":61527,"date":"2009-06-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-01T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/gazette\/?p=61527"},"modified":"2009-06-01T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-01T04:00:00","slug":"invention-of-cooking-drove-evolution-of-the-human-species-new-book-argues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2009\/06\/invention-of-cooking-drove-evolution-of-the-human-species-new-book-argues\/","title":{"rendered":"Invention of cooking drove evolution of the human species, new book argues"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\n\t
\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\tScience & Tech\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t

\n\t\tInvention of cooking drove evolution of the human species, new book argues\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\n\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\tSteve Bradt\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\tFaculty of Arts and Sciences\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t

\n\t\t\tWe are what we eat, and what we cook\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\t\t

 \u201cYou are what you eat.\u201d Can these pithy words explain the evolution of the human species?<\/p>\n

Yes, says Richard Wrangham<\/a> of Harvard University, who argues in a new book that the invention of cooking \u2014 even more than agriculture, the eating of meat, or the advent of tools \u2014 is what led to the rise of humanity.<\/p>\n

Wrangham\u2019s book \u201cCatching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human<\/a>\u201d is published today by Basic Books. In it, he makes the case that the ability to harness fire and cook food allowed the brain to grow and the digestive tract to shrink, giving rise to our ancestor Homo erectus<\/a> some 1.8 million years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cCooking is the signature feature of the human diet, and indeed, of human life \u2014 but we have no idea why,\u201d says Wrangham, the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology in Harvard\u2019s Faculty of Arts and Sciences<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s the development that underpins many other changes that have made humans so distinct from other species.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drawing on a wide body of research, Wrangham makes the case that cooking makes eating faster and easier, and wrings more caloric benefit from food. Moreover, he writes, cooking is vitally important to supporting the outsize human brain, which consumes a quarter of the body\u2019s energy. <\/p>\n

By freeing humans from having to spend half the day chewing tough raw food \u2014 as most of our primate relatives do \u2014 cooking allowed early humans to devote themselves to more productive activities, ultimately allowing the development of tools, agriculture, and social networks. Cooked food is also softer, meaning the body uses less energy digesting what it takes in.<\/p>\n

Since physical remnants of fire tend to degrade rapidly, archaeological evidence of fire and cooking dates back only about 800,000 years. Wrangham looked to biological evidence, which shows that around 1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus arose with larger brains and bodies and smaller guts, jaws, and teeth \u2014 changes consistent with the switch to a more tender and energetically rich diet of cooked food.<\/p>\n

\u201cCooking is what makes the human diet \u2018human,\u2019 and the most logical explanation for the advances in brain and body size over our ape ancestors,\u201d Wrangham says. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to imagine the leap to Homo erectus without cooking\u2019s nutritional benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n

While others have posited that meat-eating enabled the rise of Homo erectus some 1.8 million years ago, Wrangham says those theories don\u2019t mesh with that species\u2019 smaller jaws and teeth. Instead, he claims meat enabled the shift from australopithecines<\/a> to Homo habilis<\/a> \u2014 a species about the size of a chimp, but with a bigger brain \u2014 more than half a million years earlier.<\/p>\n

Wrangham says the adoption of cooking had profound impacts on human families and relationships, making hearth and home central to humanity and driving humans into paired mating and perhaps even traditional male-female household roles. <\/p>\n

He writes that the advent of cooking permitted a new distribution of labor between men and women: Men entered into relationships to have someone to cook for them, freeing them up for socializing and other pursuits and bolstering their social standing. Women benefited from men\u2019s protection, safeguarding their food from thieves. Homo sapiens<\/a> remains the only species in which theft of food is uncommon even when it would be easy.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo this day, cooking continues in every known human society,\u201d Wrangham says. \u201cWe are biologically adapted to cook food. It\u2019s part of who we are and affects us in every way you can imagine: biologically, anatomically, socially.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

 \u201cYou are what you eat.\u201d Can these pithy words explain the evolution of the human species? Yes, says Richard Wrangham of Harvard University, who argues in a new book that…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105622744,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"gz_ga_pageviews":40,"gz_ga_lastupdated":"2022-05-16 11:39","document_color_palette":null,"author":"Steve Bradt","affiliation":"Faculty of Arts and Sciences","_category_override":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1387],"tags":[3249,4501,10612,10659,12782,12941,26016,29454,31626],"gazette-formats":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-61527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-technology","tag-agriculture","tag-anthropology","tag-department-of-anthropology","tag-department-of-human-evolutionary-biology","tag-evolutionary-biology","tag-faculty-of-arts-and-sciences","tag-nutrition-and-diet","tag-richard-wrangham","tag-social-psychology"],"yoast_head":"\nInvention of cooking drove evolution of the human species, new book argues — Harvard Gazette<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2009\/06\/invention-of-cooking-drove-evolution-of-the-human-species-new-book-argues\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Invention of cooking drove evolution of the human species, new book argues — Harvard Gazette\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\" \u201cYou are what you eat.\u201d Can these pithy words explain the evolution of the human species? 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new book argues","subheading":"We are what we eat, and what we cook","className":"is-style-square","backgroundFixed":false,"backgroundTone":"light","centeredImage":false,"coloredBackground":false,"displayOverlay":true,"fadeInText":false,"isAmbient":false,"mediaHeight":0,"mediaLength":"","mediaPosition":"","mediaWidth":0,"posterText":"","titleAbove":false,"useUncroppedImage":false,"lock":[],"metadata":[]},"innerBlocks":[],"innerHTML":"","innerContent":[],"rendered":"<header\n\tclass=\"wp-block-harvard-gazette-article-header alignfull article-header is-style-square has-light-background has-colored-heading\"\n\tstyle=\" \"\n>\n\t\n\t<div class=\"article-header__content\">\n\t\t\t<a\n\t\t\tclass=\"article-header__category\"\n\t\t\thref=\"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/science-technology\/\"\n\t\t>\n\t\t\tScience & Tech\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\n\t\t<h1 class=\"article-header__title wp-block-heading \">\n\t\tInvention of cooking drove evolution of the human species, new book argues\t<\/h1>\n\n\t\n\t\n\t<div class=\"article-header__meta\">\n\t\t<div class=\"wp-block-post-author\">\n\t\t\t<address class=\"wp-block-post-author__content\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<p class=\"author wp-block-post-author__name\">\n\t\tSteve Bradt\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t<p class=\"wp-block-post-author__byline\">\n\t\t\tFaculty of Arts and Sciences\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/address>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t<time class=\"article-header__date\" datetime=\"2009-06-01\">\n\t\t\tJune 1, 2009\t\t<\/time>\n\n\t\t<span class=\"article-header__reading-time\">\n\t\t\t3 min read\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\n\t\t\t<h2 class=\"article-header__subheading wp-block-heading\">\n\t\t\tWe are what we eat, and what we cook\t\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\n<\/header>\n"},"2":{"blockName":"core\/group","attrs":{"templateLock":false,"metadata":{"name":"Article content"},"align":"wide","layout":{"type":"constrained","justifyContent":"center"},"tagName":"div","lock":[],"className":"","style":[],"backgroundColor":"","textColor":"","gradient":"","fontSize":"","fontFamily":"","borderColor":"","ariaLabel":"","anchor":""},"innerBlocks":[{"blockName":"core\/freeform","attrs":{"content":"","lock":[],"metadata":[]},"innerBlocks":[],"innerHTML":"\n\t\t<p> \u201cYou are what you eat.\u201d Can these pithy words explain the evolution of the human species?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, says <a title=\"Richard Wrangham\" href=\"http:\/\/www.harvardscience.harvard.edu\/directory\/researchers\/richard-wrangham\">Richard Wrangham<\/a> of Harvard University, who argues in a new book that the invention of cooking \u2014 even more than agriculture, the eating of meat, or the advent of tools \u2014 is what led to the rise of humanity.<\/p>\n<p>Wrangham\u2019s book \u201c<a title=\"Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human\" href=\"http:\/\/www.perseusbooksgroup.com\/basic\/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0465013627\">Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human<\/a>\u201d is published today by Basic Books. In it, he makes the case that the ability to harness fire and cook food allowed the brain to grow and the digestive tract to shrink, giving rise to our ancestor <a title=\"Homo erectus\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/HumanOrigins\/ha\/erec.html\">Homo erectus<\/a> some 1.8 million years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCooking is the signature feature of the human diet, and indeed, of human life \u2014 but we have no idea why,\u201d says Wrangham, the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology in Harvard\u2019s <a title=\"Faculty of Arts and Sciences\" href=\"http:\/\/www.harvardscience.harvard.edu\/directory\/programs\/faculty-arts-and-sciences\">Faculty of Arts and Sciences<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s the development that underpins many other changes that have made humans so distinct from other species.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Drawing on a wide body of research, Wrangham makes the case that cooking makes eating faster and easier, and wrings more caloric benefit from food. Moreover, he writes, cooking is vitally important to supporting the outsize human brain, which consumes a quarter of the body\u2019s energy. <\/p>\n<p>By freeing humans from having to spend half the day chewing tough raw food \u2014 as most of our primate relatives do \u2014 cooking allowed early humans to devote themselves to more productive activities, ultimately allowing the development of tools, agriculture, and social networks. Cooked food is also softer, meaning the body uses less energy digesting what it takes in.<\/p>\n<p>Since physical remnants of fire tend to degrade rapidly, archaeological evidence of fire and cooking dates back only about 800,000 years. Wrangham looked to biological evidence, which shows that around 1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus arose with larger brains and bodies and smaller guts, jaws, and teeth \u2014 changes consistent with the switch to a more tender and energetically rich diet of cooked food.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCooking is what makes the human diet \u2018human,\u2019 and the most logical explanation for the advances in brain and body size over our ape ancestors,\u201d Wrangham says. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to imagine the leap to Homo erectus without cooking\u2019s nutritional benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While others have posited that meat-eating enabled the rise of Homo erectus some 1.8 million years ago, Wrangham says those theories don\u2019t mesh with that species\u2019 smaller jaws and teeth. Instead, he claims meat enabled the shift from <a title=\"australopithecines\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/humanorigins\/ha\/afri.html\">australopithecines<\/a> to <a title=\"Homo habilis\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/humanorigins\/ha\/hab.html\">Homo habilis<\/a> \u2014 a species about the size of a chimp, but with a bigger brain \u2014 more than half a million years earlier.<\/p>\n<p>Wrangham says the adoption of cooking had profound impacts on human families and relationships, making hearth and home central to humanity and driving humans into paired mating and perhaps even traditional male-female household roles. <\/p>\n<p>He writes that the advent of cooking permitted a new distribution of labor between men and women: Men entered into relationships to have someone to cook for them, freeing them up for socializing and other pursuits and bolstering their social standing. Women benefited from men\u2019s protection, safeguarding their food from thieves. <a title=\"Homo sapiens\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/humanorigins\/ha\/sap.htm\">Homo sapiens<\/a> remains the only species in which theft of food is uncommon even when it would be easy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo this day, cooking continues in every known human society,\u201d Wrangham says. \u201cWe are biologically adapted to cook food. It\u2019s part of who we are and affects us in every way you can imagine: biologically, anatomically, socially.\u201d<\/p>\n","innerContent":["\n\t\t<p> \u201cYou are what you eat.\u201d Can these pithy words explain the evolution of the human species?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, says <a title=\"Richard Wrangham\" href=\"http:\/\/www.harvardscience.harvard.edu\/directory\/researchers\/richard-wrangham\">Richard Wrangham<\/a> of Harvard University, who argues in a new book that the invention of cooking \u2014 even more than agriculture, the eating of meat, or the advent of tools \u2014 is what led to the rise of humanity.<\/p>\n<p>Wrangham\u2019s book \u201c<a title=\"Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human\" href=\"http:\/\/www.perseusbooksgroup.com\/basic\/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0465013627\">Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human<\/a>\u201d is published today by Basic Books. In it, he makes the case that the ability to harness fire and cook food allowed the brain to grow and the digestive tract to shrink, giving rise to our ancestor <a title=\"Homo erectus\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/HumanOrigins\/ha\/erec.html\">Homo erectus<\/a> some 1.8 million years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCooking is the signature feature of the human diet, and indeed, of human life \u2014 but we have no idea why,\u201d says Wrangham, the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology in Harvard\u2019s <a title=\"Faculty of Arts and Sciences\" href=\"http:\/\/www.harvardscience.harvard.edu\/directory\/programs\/faculty-arts-and-sciences\">Faculty of Arts and Sciences<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s the development that underpins many other changes that have made humans so distinct from other species.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Drawing on a wide body of research, Wrangham makes the case that cooking makes eating faster and easier, and wrings more caloric benefit from food. Moreover, he writes, cooking is vitally important to supporting the outsize human brain, which consumes a quarter of the body\u2019s energy. <\/p>\n<p>By freeing humans from having to spend half the day chewing tough raw food \u2014 as most of our primate relatives do \u2014 cooking allowed early humans to devote themselves to more productive activities, ultimately allowing the development of tools, agriculture, and social networks. Cooked food is also softer, meaning the body uses less energy digesting what it takes in.<\/p>\n<p>Since physical remnants of fire tend to degrade rapidly, archaeological evidence of fire and cooking dates back only about 800,000 years. Wrangham looked to biological evidence, which shows that around 1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus arose with larger brains and bodies and smaller guts, jaws, and teeth \u2014 changes consistent with the switch to a more tender and energetically rich diet of cooked food.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCooking is what makes the human diet \u2018human,\u2019 and the most logical explanation for the advances in brain and body size over our ape ancestors,\u201d Wrangham says. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to imagine the leap to Homo erectus without cooking\u2019s nutritional benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While others have posited that meat-eating enabled the rise of Homo erectus some 1.8 million years ago, Wrangham says those theories don\u2019t mesh with that species\u2019 smaller jaws and teeth. Instead, he claims meat enabled the shift from <a title=\"australopithecines\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/humanorigins\/ha\/afri.html\">australopithecines<\/a> to <a title=\"Homo habilis\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/humanorigins\/ha\/hab.html\">Homo habilis<\/a> \u2014 a species about the size of a chimp, but with a bigger brain \u2014 more than half a million years earlier.<\/p>\n<p>Wrangham says the adoption of cooking had profound impacts on human families and relationships, making hearth and home central to humanity and driving humans into paired mating and perhaps even traditional male-female household roles. <\/p>\n<p>He writes that the advent of cooking permitted a new distribution of labor between men and women: Men entered into relationships to have someone to cook for them, freeing them up for socializing and other pursuits and bolstering their social standing. Women benefited from men\u2019s protection, safeguarding their food from thieves. <a title=\"Homo sapiens\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/humanorigins\/ha\/sap.htm\">Homo sapiens<\/a> remains the only species in which theft of food is uncommon even when it would be easy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo this day, cooking continues in every known human society,\u201d Wrangham says. \u201cWe are biologically adapted to cook food. It\u2019s part of who we are and affects us in every way you can imagine: biologically, anatomically, socially.\u201d<\/p>\n"],"rendered":"\n\t\t<p> \u201cYou are what you eat.\u201d Can these pithy words explain the evolution of the human species?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, says <a title=\"Richard Wrangham\" href=\"http:\/\/www.harvardscience.harvard.edu\/directory\/researchers\/richard-wrangham\">Richard Wrangham<\/a> of Harvard University, who argues in a new book that the invention of cooking \u2014 even more than agriculture, the eating of meat, or the advent of tools \u2014 is what led to the rise of humanity.<\/p>\n<p>Wrangham\u2019s book \u201c<a title=\"Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human\" href=\"http:\/\/www.perseusbooksgroup.com\/basic\/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0465013627\">Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human<\/a>\u201d is published today by Basic Books. In it, he makes the case that the ability to harness fire and cook food allowed the brain to grow and the digestive tract to shrink, giving rise to our ancestor <a title=\"Homo erectus\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/HumanOrigins\/ha\/erec.html\">Homo erectus<\/a> some 1.8 million years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCooking is the signature feature of the human diet, and indeed, of human life \u2014 but we have no idea why,\u201d says Wrangham, the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology in Harvard\u2019s <a title=\"Faculty of Arts and Sciences\" href=\"http:\/\/www.harvardscience.harvard.edu\/directory\/programs\/faculty-arts-and-sciences\">Faculty of Arts and Sciences<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s the development that underpins many other changes that have made humans so distinct from other species.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Drawing on a wide body of research, Wrangham makes the case that cooking makes eating faster and easier, and wrings more caloric benefit from food. Moreover, he writes, cooking is vitally important to supporting the outsize human brain, which consumes a quarter of the body\u2019s energy. <\/p>\n<p>By freeing humans from having to spend half the day chewing tough raw food \u2014 as most of our primate relatives do \u2014 cooking allowed early humans to devote themselves to more productive activities, ultimately allowing the development of tools, agriculture, and social networks. Cooked food is also softer, meaning the body uses less energy digesting what it takes in.<\/p>\n<p>Since physical remnants of fire tend to degrade rapidly, archaeological evidence of fire and cooking dates back only about 800,000 years. Wrangham looked to biological evidence, which shows that around 1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus arose with larger brains and bodies and smaller guts, jaws, and teeth \u2014 changes consistent with the switch to a more tender and energetically rich diet of cooked food.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCooking is what makes the human diet \u2018human,\u2019 and the most logical explanation for the advances in brain and body size over our ape ancestors,\u201d Wrangham says. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to imagine the leap to Homo erectus without cooking\u2019s nutritional benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While others have posited that meat-eating enabled the rise of Homo erectus some 1.8 million years ago, Wrangham says those theories don\u2019t mesh with that species\u2019 smaller jaws and teeth. Instead, he claims meat enabled the shift from <a title=\"australopithecines\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/humanorigins\/ha\/afri.html\">australopithecines<\/a> to <a title=\"Homo habilis\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/humanorigins\/ha\/hab.html\">Homo habilis<\/a> \u2014 a species about the size of a chimp, but with a bigger brain \u2014 more than half a million years earlier.<\/p>\n<p>Wrangham says the adoption of cooking had profound impacts on human families and relationships, making hearth and home central to humanity and driving humans into paired mating and perhaps even traditional male-female household roles. <\/p>\n<p>He writes that the advent of cooking permitted a new distribution of labor between men and women: Men entered into relationships to have someone to cook for them, freeing them up for socializing and other pursuits and bolstering their social standing. Women benefited from men\u2019s protection, safeguarding their food from thieves. <a title=\"Homo sapiens\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/humanorigins\/ha\/sap.htm\">Homo sapiens<\/a> remains the only species in which theft of food is uncommon even when it would be easy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo this day, cooking continues in every known human society,\u201d Wrangham says. \u201cWe are biologically adapted to cook food. It\u2019s part of who we are and affects us in every way you can imagine: biologically, anatomically, socially.\u201d<\/p>\n"}],"innerHTML":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide\">\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n","innerContent":["\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide\">\n\n","\n\n<\/div>\n"],"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group alignwide has-global-padding is-content-justification-center is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n\n\n\t\t<p> \u201cYou are what you eat.\u201d Can these pithy words explain the evolution of the human species?<\/p>\n<p>Yes, says <a title=\"Richard Wrangham\" href=\"http:\/\/www.harvardscience.harvard.edu\/directory\/researchers\/richard-wrangham\">Richard Wrangham<\/a> of Harvard University, who argues in a new book that the invention of cooking \u2014 even more than agriculture, the eating of meat, or the advent of tools \u2014 is what led to the rise of humanity.<\/p>\n<p>Wrangham\u2019s book \u201c<a title=\"Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human\" href=\"http:\/\/www.perseusbooksgroup.com\/basic\/book_detail.jsp?isbn=0465013627\">Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human<\/a>\u201d is published today by Basic Books. In it, he makes the case that the ability to harness fire and cook food allowed the brain to grow and the digestive tract to shrink, giving rise to our ancestor <a title=\"Homo erectus\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/HumanOrigins\/ha\/erec.html\">Homo erectus<\/a> some 1.8 million years ago.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCooking is the signature feature of the human diet, and indeed, of human life \u2014 but we have no idea why,\u201d says Wrangham, the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology in Harvard\u2019s <a title=\"Faculty of Arts and Sciences\" href=\"http:\/\/www.harvardscience.harvard.edu\/directory\/programs\/faculty-arts-and-sciences\">Faculty of Arts and Sciences<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s the development that underpins many other changes that have made humans so distinct from other species.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Drawing on a wide body of research, Wrangham makes the case that cooking makes eating faster and easier, and wrings more caloric benefit from food. Moreover, he writes, cooking is vitally important to supporting the outsize human brain, which consumes a quarter of the body\u2019s energy. <\/p>\n<p>By freeing humans from having to spend half the day chewing tough raw food \u2014 as most of our primate relatives do \u2014 cooking allowed early humans to devote themselves to more productive activities, ultimately allowing the development of tools, agriculture, and social networks. Cooked food is also softer, meaning the body uses less energy digesting what it takes in.<\/p>\n<p>Since physical remnants of fire tend to degrade rapidly, archaeological evidence of fire and cooking dates back only about 800,000 years. Wrangham looked to biological evidence, which shows that around 1.8 million years ago, Homo erectus arose with larger brains and bodies and smaller guts, jaws, and teeth \u2014 changes consistent with the switch to a more tender and energetically rich diet of cooked food.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCooking is what makes the human diet \u2018human,\u2019 and the most logical explanation for the advances in brain and body size over our ape ancestors,\u201d Wrangham says. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to imagine the leap to Homo erectus without cooking\u2019s nutritional benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While others have posited that meat-eating enabled the rise of Homo erectus some 1.8 million years ago, Wrangham says those theories don\u2019t mesh with that species\u2019 smaller jaws and teeth. Instead, he claims meat enabled the shift from <a title=\"australopithecines\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/humanorigins\/ha\/afri.html\">australopithecines<\/a> to <a title=\"Homo habilis\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/humanorigins\/ha\/hab.html\">Homo habilis<\/a> \u2014 a species about the size of a chimp, but with a bigger brain \u2014 more than half a million years earlier.<\/p>\n<p>Wrangham says the adoption of cooking had profound impacts on human families and relationships, making hearth and home central to humanity and driving humans into paired mating and perhaps even traditional male-female household roles. <\/p>\n<p>He writes that the advent of cooking permitted a new distribution of labor between men and women: Men entered into relationships to have someone to cook for them, freeing them up for socializing and other pursuits and bolstering their social standing. Women benefited from men\u2019s protection, safeguarding their food from thieves. <a title=\"Homo sapiens\" href=\"http:\/\/anthropology.si.edu\/humanorigins\/ha\/sap.htm\">Homo sapiens<\/a> remains the only species in which theft of food is uncommon even when it would be easy.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo this day, cooking continues in every known human society,\u201d Wrangham says. \u201cWe are biologically adapted to cook food. It\u2019s part of who we are and affects us in every way you can imagine: biologically, anatomically, socially.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>\n"}},"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":61518,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2009\/05\/new-department-reflects-the-evolution-of-human-evolution\/","url_meta":{"origin":61527,"position":0},"title":"New department reflects the evolution of human evolution","author":"harvardgazette","date":"May 28, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Earlier this month, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) made official what scientists worldwide have known for years: Harvard is a hotbed of research and teaching in the field of human evolutionary biology \u2014 the study of why we\u2019re the way we are. \u201cAs the first university to create\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Tech","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/science-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":88047,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2011\/08\/the-efficient-caveman-cook\/","url_meta":{"origin":61527,"position":1},"title":"The efficient caveman cook","author":"harvardgazette","date":"August 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Harvard researchers say the rise of cooking likely occurred more than 1.9 million years ago and bestowed on human ancestors a gift of time in the form of hours each day not spent eating.","rel":"","context":"In "Health"","block_context":{"text":"Health","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/health\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/081811_chewing_231_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/081811_chewing_231_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/081811_chewing_231_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":9258,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2009\/05\/biology-department-evolves-at-fas\/","url_meta":{"origin":61527,"position":2},"title":"Biology department evolves at FAS","author":"harvardgazette","date":"May 28, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Earlier this month, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) made official what scientists worldwide have known for years: Harvard is a hotbed of research and teaching in the field of human evolutionary biology \u2014 the study of why we\u2019re the way we are.","rel":"","context":"In "Health"","block_context":{"text":"Health","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/health\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36042,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2010\/01\/looking-at-cooking\/","url_meta":{"origin":61527,"position":3},"title":"Looking at cooking","author":"harvardgazette","date":"January 28, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Harvard biology professor Richard Wrangham talks about the importance of cooking in human origins.","rel":"","context":"In "Health"","block_context":{"text":"Health","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/health\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/012710_wrangham_222_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/012710_wrangham_222_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/012710_wrangham_222_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":95257,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2011\/11\/why-cooking-counts\/","url_meta":{"origin":61527,"position":4},"title":"Why cooking counts","author":"harvardgazette","date":"November 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"In a first-of-its-kind study, Harvard researchers have shown that cooked meat provides more energy than raw meat, a finding that challenges the current food labeling system and suggests humans are evolutionarily adapted to take advantage of the benefits of cooking.","rel":"","context":"In "Health"","block_context":{"text":"Health","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/health\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/meat_grill2_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/meat_grill2_605.jpg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/meat_grill2_605.jpg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":57897,"url":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/story\/2002\/06\/cooking-up-a-story-of-apes-and-humans\/","url_meta":{"origin":61527,"position":5},"title":"Cooking up a story of apes and humans","author":"harvardgazette","date":"June 13, 2002","format":false,"excerpt":"For humans, cooking played a major role in the development of smaller jaws and teeth, bigger brains, smaller guts, shorter arms, and longer legs, according to Richard Wrangham, professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University. He also believes that cooking is associated with females getting heavier and more fertile. That,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Science & Tech"","block_context":{"text":"Science & Tech","link":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/section\/science-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105622744"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61527\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61527"},{"taxonomy":"format","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gazette-formats?post=61527"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.harvard.edu\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=61527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}