Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
by Richard Wrangham
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Book Reviews of Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
Book Review: Culture as biology
Summary: 4 Stars
A fascinating and quite compelling argument that the eating of cooked food triggered the evolution of humans' large brains, by providing more usable energy per unit chew. We are accustomed to the notion that our physical evolution has affected our culture, but this is the first strong argument I've seen that the reverse is true as well.
I am intrinsically suspicious of single-causation arguments, but this one is thoroughly researched and very well presented. The only real weakness of the idea is that it's hard to see how anyone could falsify it; in spots (e.g. the discussion of when fire was discovered) the book can't avoid a descent into mere speculation. Quite likely Wrangham hasn't gotten hold of the whole story, but I'm willing to believe he's found an important piece of it.
Book Review: What a great idea!
Summary: 5 Stars
Wrangham marshalls a great deal of evidence from a wide array of fields to claim that the critical development that separated genus Homo -- our extinct relatives and us -- from our Australopithecine ancestors was the invention of cooking. If so, cooking started long before most scholars have previously estimated. Wrangham is a specialist in non-human primates, so his argument is strongest when he is contrasting their anatomy and behavior to humans'. I am no anthropologist, but unitl I hear the other side, I find this pretty persuasive. The book's also a good read.Book Review: Catching Fire
Summary: 5 Stars
The idea that it was cooking that led to our differentiation from the rest of the apes and made us into what we are now is an intriguing one. And Mr. Wrangham makes a good case for his position. He does, I think, spend a little too much time refuting arguments in favor of a raw diet, but this is a minor caveat. He then suggests that cooking led to what eventually became marriage and the sexual division of labor. This is another interesting idea, and while I am not sure that I agree with all his arguements, for the most part they have some logic to them.Book Review: Learnng how we became human
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a brilliant, convincing and thoroughly entertaining exploration of how we evolved into erect, social, and (relatively) brainy human beings. Professor Wangham draws on a multiplicity of disciplines and experiences to examine what seems like an obvious evolutionary change, but one with unexpectedly profound effects on our pre-human ancestors. So much about how we became human becomes clear in this accessible, engaging book. If you read one non-fiction book this year, Catching Fire should be it.Book Review: Interesting But Not Entertaining
Summary: 2 Stars
Professor Wrangham presents some very interesting facts regarding the impact that cooking had on human development. He relates the development of our human physical traits to the types of food that our human ancestors began to eat and how they were prepared. Unfortunately, the writing style was tiring, and the more I read the less I wanted to read (and finish) the book. It is one of the few books of its type that I just could not force myself to finish in spite of the very interesting subject matter.