Posted
10/11/2009 12:33:00 PM
by Douglas
Food makes humans human, and learning how to
cook gave us big, juicy brains:
Richard Wrangham has new ideas about why these changes occurred. He has no argument with the generally accepted wisdom that our first transformation – from nimble tree-climbing australopithecines to sociable, tool-wielding habilines – was the consequence of a meat diet. But the character of the second change – from Homo habilis to the protohuman Homo erectus – has never been adequately explained, and Wrangham believes he has the answer: 1.8 million years ago, we learned to cook. Cooking improves the caloric value of food, and widens the range of what is edible. It literally powered our evolution.
I think it's time to grill a steak. A think, delicious, monkey steak.