A Little Brain Food To Chew On

Richard Wrangham at Harvard has written a book called "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human." That got me right there. I had never really thought about this seemingly obvious discovery. Professor Wrangham is the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology, Curator of Primate Behavioral Biology. OK, got that out of the way, wheww! I never would have thought cooking to be such an integral part of our evolution as a species. Isn't that interesting? Professor Wrangham says, "Cooking is the signature feature of the human diet, and indeed, of human life - and we have no idea why." He talks about how cooking saved time for our species early on and freed us up to do other things and develop in other ways. It doesn't stop there. The Professor attributes cooking to bringing families together, establishing the "hearth and home" concept, as well as allowing for a "division of labor" between males and females. Cooking changed who hunted. Instead of everyone hunting all the time, the males of the species took on the hunting and the females took on the cooking. I wonder if the book goes into the theories of why that happened.

Cooking is present in every human society. Wow, some common ground we can all relate to. I like that!

I was alerted to this research and book by a friend of mine(thank-you Frederick) who is a surgeon in Virginia. I find the premise fascinating and will probably get the book so that I can really dig into it.

Here's the link to an article about the book:

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human