Richard Wrangham

"How Cooking Made Us Human"

Unlike the other great apes, humans are dependent upon fire

for survival. A critical adaptive benefit is that cooking leads to

large increases in net energy gain. Cooking probably originated

with the genus Homo, but regardless of the time of origin, it had

enormous consequences. Richard Wrangham will consider the

impacts of cooking and the control of fire on life history and

brain evolution and diet, including access to meat and honey -

critical resources for modern hunter-gatherers.