Here's Richard Wrangham's latest book "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human" to be
published 25 May.
http://tinyurl.com/oprjkd
I'll find it a relief to read about the big biohistorical principles
in the human story rather than blood tests results or treating
obesity and other illneses.
Here is the publisher's blurb:
"Ever since Darwin and The Descent of Man, the existence
of humans has been attributed to our intelligence and adaptability.
But in Catching Fire, renowned primatologist Richard Wrangham
presents a startling alternative: our evolutionary success is the
result of cooking. In a groundbreaking theory of our origins,
Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the
key factor in human evolution. When our ancestors adapted to
using fire, humanity began. Once our hominid ancestors began
cooking their food, the human digestive tract shrank and the brain
grew. Time once spent chewing tough raw food could be sued
instead to hunt and to tend camp. Cooking became the basis for
pair bonding and marriage, created the household, and even led
to a sexual division of labor. Tracing the contemporary
implications of our ancestors’ diets, Catching Fire sheds new light
on how we came to be the social, intelligent, and sexual species
we are today. A pathbreaking new theory of human evolution,
Catching Fire will provoke controversy and fascinate anyone
interested in our ancient origins—or in our modern eating habits."
Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and The Omnivore's
Dilemma: “Catching Fire is convincing in argument and impressive
in its explanatory power. A rich and important book.”
Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University: “In this thoroughly
researched and marvelously well written book, Richard
Wrangham has convincingly supplied a missing piece in the
evolutionary origin of humanity.”
Matt Ridley, author of Genome and The Agile Gene:"Cooking
completely transformed the human race, allowing us to live on
the ground, develop bigger brains and smaller mouths, and
invent specialized sex roles. This notion is surprising, fresh and,
in the hands of Richard Wrangham, utterly persuasive. He brings
to bear evidence from chimpanzees, fossils, food labs, and
dieticians. Big, new ideas do not come along often in evolution
these days, but this is one.”
Wrangham offers his interpretation of the accumulating
palaeontological evidence. It's open too us to interpret the new
evidence differently, but Wrangham is always a great source of
evidence - and the different possible interpreatations show us
there is no simple "one-size-fits-all" model of human evolution.
Here's a pre-publication interview with Wrangham in the NYT:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/science/21conv.html?_r=1&ref=science
Keith
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