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A book of whoppers, so wrong-headed.
For instance:
Keith Thomas wrote:
> Here's Richard Wrangham's latest book "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human" to be
> published 25 May.
>
> 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.
The result of cooking has been devolution, if anything.
> In a groundbreaking theory of our origins,
> Wrangham shows that the shift from raw to cooked foods was the
> key factor in human evolution.
It made life nasty, brutish and short.
> 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.
Whopper! Guts shrink when we eat raw zero carb. Neolithic brains are
shrunken.
Time once spent chewing tough raw food could be sued
> instead to hunt and to tend camp.
Was used instead for the grinding toil of neolithic farming.
Cooking became the basis for
> pair bonding and marriage, created the household, and even led
> to a sexual division of labor.
Really! That means that short female legs and big bum muscles are
designed for pulling the plow, while he steered.
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 hunting party needs more social skills and intelligence than farming.
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."
>
Certainly path-breaking. Wrong path, though.
William
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