Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
At the heart of Catching Fire lies an explosive new idea: the habit of eating cooked rather than raw food permitted the digestive tract to shrink and the human brain to grow, helped structure human society, and created the male-female division of labour. As our ancestors adapted to using fire, humans emerged as 'the cooking ape'.
Covering everything from food-labelling and overweight pets to raw-food faddists, Catching Fire offers a startlingly original argument about how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today.
Richard Wrangham is the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University, Curator of Primate Behavioral Biology at the Peabody Museum, and Director of the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in Uganda. He is the co-author of Demonic Males and co-editor of Primate Societies, Chimpanzee Cultures, Science and Conservation in African Forests, and Sexual Coercion in Primates. He has been featured on NPR and in the Boston Globe, New Scientist, Scientific American, and more. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Author: Richard Wrangham
Format: Paperback, 320 pages, 128mm x 196mm, 220 g
Published: 2010, Profile Books Ltd, United Kingdom
Genre: Popular Science
Interest Age: From 18 years
At the heart of Catching Fire lies an explosive new idea: the habit of eating cooked rather than raw food permitted the digestive tract to shrink and the human brain to grow, helped structure human society, and created the male-female division of labour. As our ancestors adapted to using fire, humans emerged as 'the cooking ape'.
Covering everything from food-labelling and overweight pets to raw-food faddists, Catching Fire offers a startlingly original argument about how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species we are today.
Richard Wrangham is the Ruth Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University, Curator of Primate Behavioral Biology at the Peabody Museum, and Director of the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in Uganda. He is the co-author of Demonic Males and co-editor of Primate Societies, Chimpanzee Cultures, Science and Conservation in African Forests, and Sexual Coercion in Primates. He has been featured on NPR and in the Boston Globe, New Scientist, Scientific American, and more. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.