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We Are What We Eat In Richard Wrangham's Catching Fire

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Catching Fire: We Are What We Eat Many people around the world know the story that apes evolved over thousands of centuries into the humans we are today. Theories suggest that natural selection, natural disasters, and other events caused evolutionary adaptations that caused the evolution from apes to humans. In Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, the author, Richard Wrangham discusses the several ways humans have become who they are today as a result of evolution, yet he suggests that the adaptations humans have are a direct result of their diet. These adaptations include smaller digestive systems, larger brains, and physical changes that lead to the loss of their climbing ability. Wrangham proposes that dietary changes are the main reason for the biological separation between apes and humans. Evolution takes hundreds of thousands of years to drastically show change, so by searching for evolutionary advances, scientists discovered a main reason why animals, as a whole, experience change. After several years of hearing “we are what we eat," science has come to show that: “animals are superbly adapted to their diets, and over evolutionary time the tight fit between food and anatomy is driven by food rather …show more content…

When fire was under their control, Homo Erectus began to sleep on the ground as they now had a source of light, warmth, and protection, proving no need to climb trees seeking shelter, which may “explain why Homo Erectus lost their climbing ability”(Wrangham 101). With everything Homo Erectus needed to survive being on the ground, they began to walk farther distances rather than climb, resulting in longer legs and flatter feet, which allowed for walking on two legs. These changes are one of the few physical characteristics that distinctly separate humans from apes, without these changes, humans may not have evolved much beyond

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Throughout the book, Wrangham informs us on how the start of cooking would have resulted in more benefits than just increased energy gains. He claims that cooking would have increased the range of foods which is edible. Therefore cooking seems to have provided a rational reason as to why Homo Erectus had migrated out of Africa, other than climatic reasons. Furthermore, as a result of cooking, less time would have been spent on chewing. Therefore Homo erectus would have had ample time to venture out to hunt and explore.

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