Richard wrangham how cooking made us human

2009 book by Richard Wrangham

Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human is a 2009 book by British primatologistRichard Wrangham, published by Profile Books in England, and Basic Books in the US.

It argues the hypothesis that cooking food was an essential element in the physiological evolution of human beings. It was shortlisted for the 2010 Samuel Johnson Prize.

Richard wrangham how cooking made us human

History of the idea

Eighteenth-century writers noted already that "people cooked their meat, rather than eating it raw like animals". Oliver Goldsmith considered that "of all other animals, we spend the least time in eating; this is one of the great distinctions between us and the brute creation".

In 1999, Wrangham published the first version of the hypothesis in Current Anthropology.^[1] A short outline of the hypothesis was presented by John Allman (2000)^[2] presumably based upon Wrangham (1999).

Overview

Humans (species in the genus Homo) are