Originally broadcast: June 8, 2009
We were apes before we were humans. But humans were the onetime apes who ultimately mastered fire and cooked.
Primatologist and anthropologist Richard Wrangham says that in evolutionary terms, that made all the difference. And not just because it put flambé on the menu.
Fire meant proto-humans could cook. Cooking, he says, meant they could get dense, empowering nourishment. Then came bigger brains, a different body and — voila! — homo sapiens. Complete, he says, with a social structure built around that fire.
This hour, On Point: Fire, cooking, and human evolution.
You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.
-Tom Ashbrook
Guest:
Richard Wrangham joins us from Seattle, Wash. He’s professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University and a primatologist who has spent four decades studying chimpanzee behavior and what it tells us about human evolution. His new book is “Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human.”
You can read an excerpt from “Catching Fire” at NYTimes.com.
perhaps too off the subject…I have read that 40% of Americans do not believe in evolution and another 20% doubt that evolution occurs. My question…what are the implications of this widespread denial of what most scientist consider to be the central fact of biology.
This morning’s dicussion is a mute point to the majority of Americans which concerns me greatly.
Posted by Bill Robbins, on September 7th, 2009 at 11:08 am UTCI think most people deny that evolution occurs because they don’t take the time to even look at what facts are out there. They listen to what they are told and don’t even consider other possibilities. It’s a one sided story to them, and their belief has been forced upon them by someone or something from their own past. We just exist, poof we are here…. which is funny when at the same time something of that sort could be considered witchcraft by some but yet witchcraft, or “witches” have been said to either not exist or in the past killed….
Posted by Savannah Lewis, on September 7th, 2009 at 2:20 pm UTCCompletely off the point i understand…
So why do these people who do not believe in evolution, claim to have the ultimate belief that there is a single being in control of everything? simple… They don’t think for themselves, they don’t weigh other possibilities, they only focus and cling to what they’ve been told, anything else would be impossible… it would scare them out of their comfort zone and toss them into a completely new reality and most people, got way too comfortable…
Just heard this on WFPL in Louisville, Kentucky. It was a fascinating discussion and very interesting theory. Thank you for presenting it.
Posted by Edith Rein, on September 7th, 2009 at 3:27 pm UTCI’m curious about how sushi and raw food falls into this theory?
Posted by Michael, on September 7th, 2009 at 9:20 pm UTCI was delighted to hear today’s interview because I read the book this summer and I’ve been recommending it to everyone I think would sit still for it.
Posted by Kate, on September 8th, 2009 at 1:15 am UTCElectron is like atom, both inexhaustible.
Vladimir Lenin.
Evolution does not exclude G-d.
Posted by Zinovy Vayman, on September 9th, 2009 at 12:57 pm UTCThis book is great because it may be extended to the evolution of the civilization as we know it…