Yes, I've mentioned Wrangham's theories several times before on this list and
have pointed out why his claims are wrong. For one thing, Wrangham himself
has openly admitted that he has no real evidence to back up his claims re
cooking being invented 1.8 million years ago, and his tuber-theories are
generally not considered remotely realistic by most Palaeoarchaeologists:-
"But Henry Bunn, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin,
Madison, has a more typical--and skeptical--reaction to the tuber theory. He
says Wrangham's team "downplay[s] lots of sound evidence that we have [for
meat-eating and fire use] and [accepts] at face value problematic evidence."
A major problem for the theory, notes Hill, is that where there's cooking
smoke, there must be fire. Yet he, Michigan's Brace, and most other
anthropologists contend that cooking fires began in earnest barely 250,000
years ago, when ancient hearths, earth ovens, burnt animal bones, and flint
appear across Europe and the middle East. Back 2 million years ago, the only
sign of fire is burnt earth with human remains, which most anthropologists
consider coincidence rather than evidence of intentional fire.
O'Connell counters that fires for cooking tubers rather than meat "might have
been very ephemeral" and left few traces, but most of his colleagues remain
unconvinced. "I think there would be evidence if it were [behind] as important
an evolutionary leap as [Wrangham's team] suggests," says Behrensmeyer. "
"Even Wrangham agrees that more evidence is needed. "There hasn't been
enough satisfactory archaeology for people to get their teeth into," he says.
But he also contends that the more he looks into the question, the more
convinced he is of cooking's great importance, even 1.8 million years ago. "
Secondly, even www.beyondveg.com(which I hasten to add is a website
openly and heavily biased in favour of the issue of cooking) has pointed out
serious defects in Wrangham's claim that cooked-tubers led to greater human
brain-size:-
"Recent tuber-based hypothesis for evolutionary brain expansion fails to
address key issues such as DHA and the recent fossil record. As a case in
point, there has been one tentative alternative hypothesis put forward
recently by primatologist Richard Wrangham et al. [1999] suggesting that
perhaps cooked tubers (primarily a starch-based food) provided additional
calories/energy that might have supported brain expansion during human
evolution.
However, this idea suffers from some serious, apparently fatal flaws, in that
the paper failed to mention or address critical pieces of key evidence regarding
brain expansion that contradict the thesis. For instance, it overlooks the
crucial DHA and/or DHA-substrate adequacy issue just discussed above, which
is central to brain development and perhaps the most gaping of the holes. It's
further contradicted by the evidence of 8% decrease in human brain size
during the last 10,000 years, despite massive increases in starch consumption
since the Neolithic revolution which began at about that time. (Whether the
starch is from grain or tubers does not essentially matter in this context.)
Meat and therefore presumed DHA consumption levels, both positive *and*
negative-trending over human evolution, track relatively well not simply with
the observed brain size increases during human evolution, but with the
Neolithic-era decrease as well, on the other hand. [Eaton 1998]
These holes, among others in the hypothesis, will undoubtedly be drawing
comment from paleo researchers in future papers, and hopefully there will be a
writeup on Beyond Veg as more is published in the peer-review journals in
response to the idea. At this point, however, it does not appear to be a
serious contender in plausibly accounting for all the known evidence."
In short, there is no evidence whatsoever that cooking was instrumental re
human brain-development(though undoubtedly, in terms of cultural
development, later on), and the prevailing evidence clearly indicates that
cooking was invented only c.250,000 years ago.
Geoff
On Sat, 10 May 2008 23:48:56 -0700, Ken Stuart <k-
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>If you search the archives of this list for "Wrangham", you will find some
>papers and discussions about how tubers were an important part of the diet
of
>Paleolithic humans, and how cooking is far older than originally thought, in
>fact as old as "humans", and how cooking was important in the development
and
>advancement of human beings.
>
>--
>Cheers,
>
>Ken
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