Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human
Richard W. Wrangham
Top 10 Best Quotes
“compared to that of great apes, the reduction in human gut size saves humans at least 10 percent of daily energy expenditure: the more gut tissue in the body, the more energy must be spent on its metabolism.”
“Women in these societies often dislike marriage specifically because as wives they are obliged to produce food for men, and they have to work harder than they would as unmarried women.”
“The weight of our guts is estimated at about 60 percent of what is expected for a primate of our size: the human digestive system as a whole is much smaller than would be predicted on the basis of size relations in primates. Our small mouths, teeth, and guts fit well with the softness, high caloric density, low fiber content, and high digestibility of cooked food.”
“I believe the transformative moment that gave rise to the genus Homo, one of the great transitions in the history of life, stemmed from the control of fire and the advent of cooked meals.”
“Hundreds of different hunter-gatherer cultures have been described, and all obtained a substantial proportion of their diet from meat, often half their calories or more.”
“So the question of our origins concerns the forces that sprung Homo erectus from their australopithecine past. Anthropologists have an answer. According to the most popular view since the 1950s there was a single supposed impetus: the eating of meat.”
“Men need their personal cooks because the guarantee of an evening meal frees them to spend the day doing what they want, and allows them to entertain other men. They can find opportunities for sexual interactions more easily than they can find a food provider.”
“In addition to having a small gape, our mouths have a relatively small volume—about the same size as chimpanzee mouths, even though we weigh some 50 percent more than they do. Zoologists often try to capture the essence of our species with such phrases as the naked, bipedal, or big-brained ape. They could equally well call us the small-mouthed ape.”
“Imagine going to a sporting event with sixty thousand seats around the stadium. You arrive early with your grandmother, and the two of you take the first seats. Next to your grandmother sits her grandmother, your great-great-grandmother. Next to her is your great-great-great-great-grandmother. The stadium fills with the ghosts of preceding grandmothers. An hour later the seat next to you is occupied by the last to sit down, the ancestor of you all. She nudges your elbow, and you turn to find a strange nonhuman face. Beneath a low forehead and big brow-ridge, bright dark eyes surmount a massive jaw. Her long, muscular arms and short legs intimate her gymnastic climbing ability. She is your ancestor and an australopithecine, hardly a companion your grandmother can be expected to enjoy.”
“Food historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto proposed that cooking created mealtimes and thereby organized people into a community. For culinary historian Michael Symons, cooking promoted cooperation through sharing, because the cook always distributes food. Cooking, he wrote, is “the starting-place of trades.”
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