The Cooking Ape

Wrangham uses many links in his essay "The Cooking Ape" to illustrate how cooking made the human race what it is.  He uses such examples like since the prehuman hominids discovered fire it was not a far stretch to believe that they were able to cook their food and make it easier to eat and digest.  Wrangham said he believe that humans had to have been cooking around the 1.9 million year mark because that is when he believes the australopithecines first were able to harness fire as a tool.  He says it impacted the human race and was a factor in why we as the human race have such a higher basal metabolic rate.We are able to digest more and were able to evolve into a spieces with a smaller gut because we no longer have the amount of fiber our ancestors had, which gives us the 20% difference in the bulk of material we ingest. 

Wrangham also touches on the fact that we were able to grow to the race we are today through the changes in social structure.  He says that animal instinct had a part in our evolution.  He uses the illustration of alpha males taking a piece of food that they find relatively valuableand they would take it from the lower ranking indivduals. He says that we evolved and women chose a male who could protect her form other males that would try to take her cooked food and in turn she would feed that male.