Who Is Richard Wrangham's Arguments In Catching Fire

“Catching Fire” by Richard Wrangham theorizes a correlation between the evolution of Homo Erectus from Homo Hablis and the discovery of fire. Wrangham uses evidence from human evolution, anatomy, and primatology to support his thesis. Wrangham concludes that the morphology of modern humans is attributed to consuming cooked foods. The purpose of this paper is to analyze Wrangham’s argument regarding physical changes, social changes, and infertility.

Wrangham states that the evolutionary benefits of Homo Erectus stems from the process of cooking food (40). These advantages include smaller jaws, smaller teeth, smaller guts, and a larger brain. With fibers and proteins being broken down from cooking, human jaws were not required to be strong and were “one-eighth the size of those in macaques” (42). Human teeth were small due to consuming soft diets and limits metabolic costs (44). The surface area of a human stomach is significantly smaller than “the size expected for a typical mammal of our body weight” (43).
The author exemplifies the idea of trade-off by decreasing the energy required to create “stomach acid and synthesize digestive enzymes” (112). By decreasing metabolic costs, all unused energy was provided to the brain which utilizes “20 percent of our basal metabolic rate but makes up only 2.5% of a human’s body weight” (109). The physical changes supported by Wrangham prove that cooking food created the evolution of Homo Erectus.

As a primatologist, Wrangham describes the social changes associated with consuming cooked food.
He declares that “humans have the bigger brains of all” (109) which could be an advantage in social competition. Wrangham voices that primates with “more neocortex live in larger groups, form more close social relationships, and use coalitions more effectively” (107). This statement testifies why humans live in groups and can “outwit their rivals in competition of mates, food, allies, and status” (108). The author argues against Aiello and Wheeler and speculates that the “increase in brain size from austrlopithecines to Homo erectus occurred in multiples steps” (114). Wrangham proposes that the second brain expansion occurred when Homo Erectus became Homo Heidelbergensis and is accredited to cooking (114). The social changes brought about larger brains are not directly correlated to cooking, however they suggest that larger brains evolved the process of
cooking.

Wrangham opens “Catching Fire” by describing the Evo diet, a diet to represent the types of foods our bodies have evolved to eat (16). The purpose of the Giessen Raw Food Study was to understand human adaptation through a short-term and informal investigation with participants (17). Through the study it was found that the participants experienced poor energy expenditure and poor sexual functioning. Participants “lost 0.8 pounds per day” (17) which indicated chronic energy deficiency. This diet could be accessible to modern humans but it is not ideal for humans who had to forage for their food (22). The study also illustrated how fifty percent of the participants experienced infertility (20). This number is incomparable to women who consume meat (20). The Giessen Study simply proves that humans are unique and require cooked food as part of their diet.

Through evolutionary changes, increased social capability, and high rate of fertility it is evident that cooked food is significant for the human body. Despite limited archaeological evidence for Wrangham’s thesis, the supporting evidence is more indicative that cooking food evolved Homo Erectus.