Cooking Abilities Give Humans a Darwinian Advantage

Primatologist Richard Wrangham believes that our culinary skills have guided our biological differences from primitive humans, and have given us an evolutionary edge.

By Kathryn Hawkins. Posted on September 22 2009

Image: iStockphoto

Maybe you’re not quite Mario Batali in the kitchen. In fact, maybe you can’t do much more than boil up a pot of water and drop in some pasta. But so what? That’s still way more than a monkey can do.

While apes may be adept at opening bananas and mashing their food, humans are the only species capable of cooking food over a fire (or in a convection oven or on a grill, as the case may be). While most of us would agree that the food tastes much better cooked than raw, primatologist Richard Wrangham believes that our culinary skills have guided our biological differences from primitive humans, and have given us an evolutionary edge.

Because we are capable of cooking, we have “adapted to having a small gut - and we also have small teeth and small mouths - all of which indicates that we, as a species, have adapted to a diet which is very high quality, and we don’t have to put large amounts through our gut and retain them and ferment them for many, many hours,” Wrangham told NPR. Wrangham believes that, by virtue of cooking their food, early hominids became able to metabolize it more quickly, and did not need to devote as much energy to the digestion process.

This led in turn to the development of a larger brain, and a higher IQ. And yes, ultimately, to the rise of Julia Child, Mario Batali, Thomas Keller, and all the other chefs you probably know by name. We’ve got a feeling the early hominids weren’t slaving over a hot oven to cook up the world’s most beautiful creme brulée—but their rendition of deer roasted over an open fire wouldn’t be anything to scoff at.

Filed under: General Interest, Science,

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