Cooking is possibly the most transformative technology in human evolution — it made us human
Biologist Richard Wrangham's 'cooking hypothesis' proposes that the invention of cooking — approximately 1.8 million years ago — fundamentally transformed human evolution. Cooked food requires less energy to chew and digest, releasing more calories per unit. This freed energy for brain growth. Gut size decreased (raw food diets require large digestive tracts); brain size increased. Teeth and jaws shrank. The social aspects of cooking around fire built communication and cooperation. Wrangham argues we are, literally, 'the species that cooks' — and that a human raised entirely on raw food could not sustain the caloric requirements of our large brains.
Cooking is such a universal human practice that its absence seems inconceivable. But finding that it may have actually created the physical brain we use to contemplate it — that cooking made human intelligence possible — makes a daily mundane activity feel like the root of everything.
“Cooking may be what made us human. Richard Wrangham's hypothesis: cooking freed enough calories to grow large brains. We evolved smaller guts and larger brains because of fire. A human on a raw diet can't sustain our brain's energy needs. 🔥🧠 #OddlyHuman”