Starred review from March 9, 2009
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.
April 15, 2009
An innovative argument that cooked food led to the rise of modern Homo sapiens.
Wrangham (Biological Anthropology/Harvard Univ.; co-author: Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, 1996, etc.), the curator of Primate Behavioral Biology at the Peabody Museum, begins by demolishing the fashionable raw-food movement. Despite claims that raw food is the natural human diet, the author finds no culture, however primitive, that doesn't cook. Studies show that a pure raw-food diet provides adequate nutrients but insufficient energy; subjects lose weight and half the women stop menstruating, a sign of malnutrition. Compared to apes, our gastrointestinal tracts (lips, mouth, jaws, teeth, stomach, colon) are tiny. The reason, he asserts, is that cooked food is calorie-dense, soft and easy to digest. Searching for and consuming food occupies most of the day for all primates except humans. Chimps spend six hours per day chewing, humans about one. Searching the fossil record, Wrangham describes earlier hominids, pinpointing the cooking revolution at the appearance of our direct ancestor, Homo erectus, in Africa 1.8 million years ago."Cooking was responsible for the evolution of Homo erectus," he writes. Many anthropologists focus on its larger brain, larger body size and more stable upright posture. Wrangham emphasizes its smaller teeth and narrower rib cage and pelvis, which indicate a smaller gut. Sadly, the author concludes, modern, sedentary humans get fat, not because our bodies remain adapted to the constant threat of starvation but because we love our calorie-rich diet. Apes in captivity don't grow fat unless fed cooked food.
Experts will debate Wrangham's thesis, but most readers will be convinced by this lucid, simulating foray into popular anthropology.
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June 1, 2009
Tracing the evolution of humans from their ape predecessors presents a number of puzzles. Although chimpanzees eat meat when the opportunity avails, humans are the only primates who are committed carnivores, the only primates who gather meat from other larger animals. Moreover, only man discovered and controlled fire. And this fire enabled humans to cook. Cooked food is more easily digested, and cooking neutralizes many pathogens. Of even greater importance, cooked food empowers the body to absorb more energy. One of the first to note this, the famous gourmet Brillat-Savarin appreciated the importance of cooking in human evolution more than did Darwin. Only recently has the broader evolutionary role of cooking revealed itself. As the breadth of his bibliography attests, Wrangham has amassed biological, sociological, and archaeological data to identify when in prehistory cooking first appeared and how it also helped to define human social organization. I cook; therefore, I am.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)