Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

[@hippocrates72]

27:20 Raw foodism 28:13 104°Fahrenheit ! (40°C) 28:17 domesticated 28:50 no seasonal variation (global imports) 29:10 less energy expenditure 29:16 overweight domestic pets: loss in weight control like humans, urban rats, hedgehogs: bread & milk 31:30 starch: cooked starch makes large plasma peaks (DM!) 36:00 raw/cooked eggs 44:35 urban raw fooders (fertility under hypomenorrhea) 55:00 AGE flavors (cooked foods) are preferred 56:00 soft food (soft pulp fruit, i.e. safou) 59:00 human females lost their independence to food preparation (cooking)

[@KenDBerryMD]

Fascinating lecture, watching it for the second time now...

[@jfkluge]

Heaven! I could watch programs like this all day. I'd read the book, but the added insight and additional ideas presented in the Q&A period was terrific.

[@tylermoore4429]

This lecture blew my mind - in a good way. Dr. Richard's lucid explanations and responses, laced with humor, really put to rest a lot of doubts that I had been struggling with for years, for example the long gap between the time we start to see big anatomical changes in hominids around 2 million years ago and the purported discovery of fire around 500 thousand years ago.

[@tommyodonovan3883]

World class speaker, researcher and educator. Thank you.

[@anonymousAJ]

36:00 Dr. Wrangam discusses egg digestibility in ileostomy patients. I've actually read this study closely and I believe the authors of the study drew the incorrect conclusion. Their data show that egg yolks were better digested raw and that whites were better digested cooked. One possible explanation is due to the fact that the major proteins in egg white include ovalbumin and ovomucoid which are the major cause of egg allergies and poor digestion of egg. These are not found in raw egg yolk. Denaturing these proteins is likely to increase digestibility but denaturing protein in general has not been shown to confer any such benefit. More generally, raw animal protein digestion is likely to be energetically preferable (in the absence of pathogens) since useful structures can be absorbed and used without modification. Many human cultures have traditions involving the consumption of raw animal meat such as sushi and sashimi in Japan or steak tartare in Western Europe. I believe meat cooking is primarily an anti-pathogen technology aimed primarily at food preservation (a major element of many food cultures, involving the use of spices and salts) and secondarily at pathogen decontamination.

[@bruswan]

Very informative and enjoyable. Then again I could spent hours watching programs like this. Some of us just love love evolution and our human origin history.

[@donaldcampbell3043]

Back in 2003 I was studying Anthropology at Otago University we had a guest speaker Professor Sydney Mince from John Hopkins University present several lectures on diet and cuisine and the effects of diet on human brain growth and evolution... so this lecture caught my eye...

[@XX-qi5eu]

Fire gave us consciousness--the ability to plan ahead and think abstractly. Fire kept predators away so early man was free from the constant now of survival and was freed to think and plan, while other animals had to always be ready to fight or run. No animal can plan for the future much past 30 minutes. The use of fire was much more a factor in our becoming human than just cooking.

[@anonymousAJ]

11:55 lecture starts

[@joeschmo5699]

this guy is a smart dude and a solid scientist. I'm going with we started cooking, as Homo erectus, about 1.9 mya. Lack of evidence of fire is less compelling than the tooth and guts evidence.

[@glassworkssundrops]

The voice box in humans only travels down deeper into the throat by six months of life. We began to reflect with each other about our surroundings. Our tools came quickly including our body forms.

[@Avicena-tf5uj]

Holy crap this is gold

[@johnrobinson4445]

Brilliant book. Makes it astonishing that nobody ever tested the raw food issue before. Proteins become denatured by heat. More energy and nutrients are available. Suddenly, automatically, any part of the body (including the brain) that is stressed (and living in the wild is stressful!) now has more energy and resources to respond to that stress. Like a body-builder's muscles, the brain simply GROWS. And the stomach shrinks because the food is easier to digest. Bingo: humanity.

[@monikaboshkova139]

John Robinson so you’re saying this all happened because we cooked our meet? Sorry, I’m just asking because the term denatured protein sounds so unnatural as if we should avoid it, and with all this raw food craze( vegan or carnivore diet) I’m just wondering what’s really the optimal for us? Thanks

[@harrybruijs2614]

I am myself of the opinion that indeed cooking made is human, because it made it possible to loose the enormous chewibg muscles so our skull could grow to house the enormous brain made possible by the greater intake of proteïnes

[@sikphuk_on_tha_downlowsikp9512]

Cooking made humans into zombies

[@BatkoBrat]

@current_interest Touché, monsieur.

[@anonymousAJ]

56:25 Modern processed baby food quite obviously has no relation to ancestral/evolutionary infant nutrition.

[@IamBananaJack]

This is a very interesting topic. Cooking may be the first example of a species altering its own evolution by way of an adapted technology. I loved this and found the speaker to be very informative thank you for the upload. I personally would have done a few things differently as far as editing though, like getting the video from the beginning and splicing it into the clip and perhaps boost the audio a bit. but all in all a very good video with acceptable editing.

[@chelseadee3]

The first question reminds me of the origin of the term Eskimo. The word is said to originate from the neighboring Anishinaabeg tribes, meaning "raw meat eater" in the Anishinaabe language, and was used to describe and possibly insult the Inuit people. Inuit people consider the term offensive and didn't use the term to describe themselves. Interesting how a word meaning "raw meat eaters" would be considered offensive. Some scholars posit that the term actually originated from a similar word meaning "to net snow-shoes", but contextually this wouldn't make sense as all the Anishinaabe tribes used snowshoes as well.

[@robinlillian9471]

The traditional Eskimo diet DID include cooking. They ate BOTH raw and cooked food--just like other people. One example is smoked salmon.

[@Rico-Suave_]

Watched all of it 1:21:06

[@carrollhoagland1053]

Thanks Dr. Wrangham, I follow your work and others. Yes, the science does track that cooking improves nutrient availability, of course with some exceptions, but in general "Denatured Proteins" are much more bio-available. Since there is No known Carbohydrate Deficiency Disease - these are really Non-Essential to humans i.e. becomes moot point ... we can make all the glucose we need from fats and proteins. Leave it to BigPharma to invent new chemical for humans to control carbs. We were Fat-Adapted once upon a time but the last 200 years has been disastrous as we have changed to carbs ... we are in 6th and 7th generation of epigenetic affects ... and health and obesity is out of control. Healthy fats are critical esp. omega-3's, as is a balance of available proteins. Sorry do not consider Apples, Oranges, Bananas as quality - NO ... they have become a High Carb - Low Nutrient food. Dr. Peeke calls this "Hyper-Palatable Foods", really nothing man has made in last 200 years. Sugar = Addiction = Opioids = Dopamine = Cocaine pathway. 70 Going On 100 ... the Centenarian Diet.

[@robinlillian9471]

I'm REALLY tired of all these food cults. Humans are capable of living on a wide variety of diets. There are any number of indigenous groups who have diets that include carbohydrates AND are healthy. It's fructose and processed food that are the problem. Fructose in the diet (in soda, fruit juice, ice cream, sugary flavored yogurt, and other processed foods containing sucrose/high fructose corn syrup) has increased exponentially over the last century or so. It was only eaten in much smaller quantities before that. Sure, you can get by on a low carb diet. (No diet is zero carbs. Animal muscle meat contains glycogen.) You can also get by on a low fat diet, as long as you eat carbs, a small amount Omega 3 & Omega 6, and a enough protein. Some of the carbs get turned into saturated fat. Eat a diet that is protein and nothing else, and you will be dead in a couple of months. Glycogen In Muscle Tissue www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3248697/ The Evolution of Diet www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/evolution-of-diet/

[@monikaboshkova139]

Carroll Hoagland John Robinson so you’re saying this all happened because we cooked our meet? I mean the increased bioavailability and us turning into smarter beings? Sorry, I’m just asking because the term denatured protein sounds so unnatural as if we should avoid it, and with all this raw food craze( vegan or carnivore diet) I’m just wondering what’s really the optimal for us? Thanks

[@monikaboshkova139]

@current_interest lovely! I do almost the same with the occasional chocolate bite and don’t do IF. But everything else, delightful!

[@XX-qi5eu]

Grains and fruits have been fantastic-- it's allowed 8 billion people to live. We're adapted to get energy from fat and from carbs. Hunter gatherers lived short lives compared to modern man. It was harvesting grains and their easy abundance that led to farming. A cup of oats (22g protien) can be harvested in 2 minutes. Hunting meat takes a long time.

[@SuperJeannie10]

EazyD - yes but it was only destructive until we learned how to harness it.

[@JeffChen285]

Like many other gradualism believers such as Frederick Engels, who believes that "human's labor made human," and Lamarck, who believes that "giraffe's stretching made giraffe's long neck." Dr. Wrangham's version of evolution has everything, including subjective self trapping, inductive close-looping, but evolution.

[@robinlillian9471]

This gobbledygook is senseless. How on earth did you get the idea that Richard Wrangham denies the existence of evolution?! His point is that humans evolved eating cooked food and now need it in their diets for survival. Modern humans who have access to technology that permits them to live a little longer--like blenders and specially bred fruits & veg--but fail to reproduce healthy children after being on the diet too long. That's extinction in one or two generations--tops.

[@CraigCastanet]

No explanation was provided for why RP meat resulted in more weight loss, and CP meat resulted in less weight gain.

[@samann9]

great video!

[@varghesephanock3299]

Awesome speech

[@ManicPandaz]

"Leaky Foundation" I just got that lol

[@hippocrates72]

18:14 *fire evidence* elusive before 200,000 ya

[@BlueEternities]

Only argument I have is with the belief that the only purpose is to gain energy and convert it into one's own species. Humans seem to have broken that chain. Harmony in general is the real end-goal of life. Harmony first for oneself and then for those the individual includes (in their perception) as members of their tribe.

[@BlueEternities]

@Brandon Letzco Speak for yourself.

[@BlueEternities]

@Brandon Letzco All living beings have goals, or they'd just lay down and die, as many animals do after heartbreaking experiences. Don't be dishonest, you're a representative of life. You just think that only humans are sentient for whatever insane reason.

[@asecretturning]

Incredible

[@donfarlan214]

we dont have the volume in our digestive system our ancestors did so we predigest with heat

[@harrietharlow9929]

Very interesting video. I read the book "Catching Fire" and found it fascinating.

[@joshporters]

hahaha that guy who came in to take the questions form the audience... what was the point in that mans role.

[@SideWalkAstronomyNetherlands]

great video...logic!

[@batman4329]

Maybe scavenging animals that were killed in a fire, is what led to deliberately cooking over a fire.

[@Criticalperspective2]

Thank you for this extraordinary insight into human evolution. It is brilliant. When I think about human evolution and in particular our age-old philosophical question "why are we here", I believe chance has been one of the foundational pillars of our very existence, just as it is explained by Stephen Hawkings in the Big Bang Theory. The discovery of fire was perhaps a set of fortuitous droughts which led fire to ravage forests and trap animals with it. The mere taste of cooked meat, and the realisation of its numerous benefits, may have triggered a set of fundamental biological mechanisms, inciting our ancestors to harness it. And with the challenge of reproducing fire comes the need for cooperation and organisation.

[@papparocket]

Hominin brain size had already evolved from the 450 cc of Australopithecus to the 900 cc of Homo Erectus before there was evidence of a controlled use of fire. For comparison modern human brains average around 1350 cc. Depending on wild fires to cook our meat for us is so undependable, erratic and widely spaces in space and time that there is no way that this could have provided the additional daily calories demanded by our metabolically expensive large brains over the 2 million years between Australopithecus and Homo Erectus. If meat was the driving force for those two million years, it would have had to have been controlled and there is no evidence of that. Almost certainly some other non-meat source of calories had to have come into early hominin diet that gave them the extra daily calories required of a larger and larger brain. The most likely source is what the scientists call underground storage organs and what you and I call taters (tubers, roots, rhizomes, and corms). Most other animals have a very difficult time digging these USOs up, and so we would have little competition for this source of calories. Also these USO, as their name implies, are used by the plant for long term storage, and so once grown they are designed to sit quietly in the ground without rotting for a time when the plant needs the stored energy. As a result USOs would have been a steady year round source of calories. And for primitive humans who had not yet developed weapons and cutting tools, this would have been a source of food that that didn't try to and all too often succeed in running away or fighting back like a hunted animal would. This is not to say that humans didn't eat meat, since obviously they did. But I don't see the case for meat being the reason brain size doubled in the period before we had the mental horsepower to learn to control fire and make effective hunting weapons.

[@MerseYattle]

so this is interesting regarding those raw meat guys and why they feel good after high meat maybe as well? and why they love soft meat its "almost melts in their mouths" but they it raw why then in the egg example the cooked egg is better there must be more study on soft raw meat vs rare cooked meat or something, that whole thing with enzyme/bacteria like if you eat raw for some time one could argue you "drain" your body more and with cooked one could say that at some point you dont stimulate your digestion much anymore and go to the bad side too there needs to be a balance their i think

[@monikaboshkova139]

livevil , I’m just wondering because the term denatured protein sounds so unnatural as if we should avoid it, and with all this raw food craze( vegan or carnivore diet) I’m just wondering what’s really the optimal for us? And yes, cooked eggs and cooked meats are more palatable to us. They attract us more

[@maxwellclindsay]

BROOOO!!! THIS DUDE ATE A MONKEY!

[@TrustInTheUniverse]

A completely different view is how eating fruit made us human. Fruit is the sex organ of the plant and is filled the biochemicals and hormones that have been suggested to rapidly influence brain growth and development. Check out Tony Wright on youtube to learn more

[@TrustInTheUniverse]

***** and in the U.S. it still is and take a looo at what its doing to the population. Diabetes, cancer, obesity. The world health organization classified processed meats as well as 3 other meat sources including pork as carcinogens. Wake up dude

[@TrustInTheUniverse]

***** They eat very little meat. And thats not the healthiest diet. The california adventist vegan diet has even longer life expectancy. Happy Thanksgiving

[@ggrey5990]

+Petey Sweety Very unconvincing - it's eating meat and especially the saturated fats that allowed our brains to develop.

[@TrustInTheUniverse]

***** Those who are attached to their beliefs shall never be convinced

[@ggrey5990]

Petey Sweety Glad you admit this - perhaps don't cling so much. Good luck.

[@roxyguts23]

i like how he says "babies"

[@onenewworldmonkey]

Was fire discovered independently around the globe or was it spread down from a single invention? Answer: My ancestor invented it.

[@michaelsmith6420]

Seems that Richard is surprised at how this important fact could have been missed for many decades by so many of his "intellectual elders". But Richard - human progress has always been very slow!

[@bluwng]

Don't take everything an educated person says as absolute. We feed our pets processed easily digestible foods and they are no genius

[@peouspaul1258]

Cooking help human to consume more fiber .. most vegetables/ spices good once it cook well.. cooking is about fiber .. not caloric..

[@echo-frontidapublishing]

If you are interested in the origins of H. Sapiens (and all other members of the genus), you may enjoy watching a new theory’s short introductory video presentation @kzbin.info/www/bejne/pnStomqcgNiroNU (8 min), proposing as the birthplace/natural environment of our species a permanent warm coastal fog most likely existing for 2.6 million years at the periphery of the Irish Sea Glacier (during late Pleistocene). Is proposed in parallel that the Human higher cognition is, in fact, the outcome of a few types of transgenerational traumas/inflammations. Also, as the source of all the unique skeletomuscular features of modern Humans proposed a severe transgenerational photo-trauma suffered by an earlier depigmented form of our species (as all individuals adapting to their new sunny environments (the rest of the planet)). The lack of pigmentation readily inferred as the result of living away from light for 2.6 my inside the said permanent warm coastal fog.

Not really clear on what the raw foodists were eating. How much meat, vegetables etc. That information would be quite informative. Also I find his emphasis on soft food really bar. Cooks cook to create soft food? Huh!! Celebrations are full of soft foods. Really? Not the ones i go to.

[@cristianm7097]

If I stop cooking, I devolve back into a Neanderthal ?

[@junebrookes8874]

Correction : women have been cooking for 1.9 million years - certainly feels like it!

[@adbrineo]

I'm not criticising on things.. I'm just curious as to then will my pets become humans too since i feed them only cooked foods even the pigs! Confusing🥺

[@klausgartenstiel4586]

and i thought: how *cocking* made us human. silly me. all i learned is that humans have less guts.

[@daveberry3853]

Audio sucks!

[@allencrider]

Since the subject of obesity came up in the talk, I'd like to remind everybody that the continuous USDA survey on food available for consumption states that in 1909, 1996 calories of carbohydrates were available per day, per capita and in 2010 that number had dropped to 1896. In 1909, 1070 calories of fat were available and in 2010 the number had grown to 1710, a 59% increase. Refined flour and sugar produce their own health problems, but it is FAT that is making us fat.

[@allencrider]

***** Fat cannot be broken down into glucose. The fat you eat, Yerrow, is the fat you wear.

[@allencrider]

***** Bwaaaa haaa haaa! Read your own propaganda, fatso! From the wikipedia page: "Mammals found to possess these genes include monotremes (platypus) and marsupials (opossum) but not placental mammals." Humans cannot synthesize glucose from FAT. Only from proteins.

[@RonPaulgirls]

***** GO BACK TO WATCHING JUSTIN BIEBER YOU STUPID FUCK, YOU DON'T EVEN REFUCKING MOTELY KNOW WHAT IN THE HELL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT........SAY JACKBALL, WHY DON'T YOU EXPLAIN WHY RAW FRUITS AND VEGETABLE EATERS, DROP 20 TO 50 POUNDS FROM EATING FATS LIKE ANIMAL FATS, GOOD GOD IN HELL ARE YOU EVER A FAKE DUMBASS

[@Anthony_in_Bloomington_Indiana]

Allen, all you know is your own ignorance. Ignorance and arrogance are a bad combination. Why would humans evolve bodies that only know how to do one thing with animal fats in the diet, and one thing that is NOT a survival advantage? Contrary to popular ignorance, when you eat animal fats, they do not run straight into your fat cells. The body can make glucose either from carbohydrates or from fats, but we function MUCH better on a high fat, moderate protein, low carbohydrate diet than on a high carb, low fat diet. The body can make glucose from fats. It's called gluconeogenesis. Look it up.

[@allencrider]

Anthony Starfield America, much of the Western world and Anthony Starfield are experiencing an obesity epidemic. This is because they're eating a 59% increase in dietary fat, as I've outlined in the first comment above. Starfield, for some odd reason, even goes so far as to assert that human beings create glucose out of fat. This is untrue, of course. Human beings cannot create glucose from FAT.

[@sugarcan1110]

Here in 2022 and monkey pox is here

[@thanos9742]

I’d say now that this video is pretty outdated. For one, the idea that humans are dependent upon COOKING to survive is ridiculous. The more likely idea is that humans optimized their foraging behavior, and greatly increased the consumption of muscle meat, organ meat, bone marrow, and high quality nuts and fruits with a little misc. vegetation on the side. Another thing is that it has been found that human brains aren’t even that energy expensive: www.upi.com/Science_News/2017/10/31/Human-brains-use-a-lot-of-energy-but-so-do-the-brains-of-other-animals-research-shows/9231509483426/ Whilst all cultures today use cooking and fire, this is probably a simple bonus, and is not a dependency upon thousands of years of evolution (by the way, it would take more than several thousand or even a million years to be dependent upon something like cooking.) Seeing as widespread cooking only really started only a couple hundred thousand years ago, when our ancestors had brain sizes similar to ours by about 1-1.5 million years, means cooking isn’t really that important to us, and was probably driven by more meat consumption, social behavior increase, and adapting to a variable savanna environment.

[@dansaghin1]

so lame... meat eaters, there is no excuse for cruelty and murder... eating meat is an addiction, deal with it!

[@dwightehowell6062]

You are an omnivore. You will eat meat or you will take supplements or you will die. Deal with it.

[@dansaghin1]

Again, a poor excuse for a addiction that is killing you slowly... Homnivore is the bear, the dog... If we check our teeth we are in fact frugivore... And pleasetell that stupidity to the hundreds of millions vegans everywhere see what they have to say about it...

[@dwightehowell6062]

I believe that B12 can be extracted from some microbes grown in labs for those that are weird. This wasn't available until recently. Without B12 humans die. This pretty much means you can be summed up as a crazy religious zealot of the insane flavor. Have nice day.

[@dwightehowell6062]

Atheist walk by faith believing in things not proven which is my definition of a religion. The courts have ruled it a religion. By the way you are going to grow old and die. Any ideas you may have to the contrary are bogus.

[@arjunratnadev]

Dwight E Howell Oh and where in the dump did you get this this stupidity"Atheist walk by faith believing in things not proven which is my definition of a religion. The courts have ruled it a religion." You are so confused and totally miss-fed about Atheism and Religion and they are totally opposite subject, Religions believes what that is just written by someone and believes that blindly, the other Questions that very process!! and some Puny Court decisions in an isolated place cannot judge Religion or Atheism where are you 1970's ha ha ;P. Also about "Any ideas you may have to the contrary are bogus." Yeah but healthy living = Healthy Life = Longer Better Life its indisputable and do you think that Believing in any Religion or eating lots of food will make you live forever!! ;D