How Homo erectus surpassed the apes: hot meals

ANNE MCILROY
21 February 2009
The Globe and Mail

Cooking can feel like a chore sometimes, but it may have given early humans a decided advantage over apes. That's the controversial theory researchers defended at the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Chicago.

The first cooks were probably Homo erectus, an extinct species that lived 1.8 million years ago. Why did they bother? Richard Wrangham, a Harvard primatologist, argues that cooking food makes it softer, which means the body uses less energy to chew and digest it. Eventually, he argues, the switch to hot meals led to smaller teeth and bigger brains.