Remember, there is always more to learn! Paleoanthropology is the study, of the need for knowledge, of our deep shared human origins. Where do we come from? It is often a question that many of us find ourselves asking from time to time. For some, the answer is in religion, and if that works forContinue reading “Top Five Paleoanthropology Discoveries of 2022”
Category Archives: fire
Neanderthal Cooking and Flavoring 70kya?
Neanderthal Cooking 70kya There are many mysteries surrounding our long-lost cousins, the Neanderthals. From how they survived to how they went extinct. One thing that has been recently discovered that changes the way we think about Neanderthals is their diet, how they consumed food, and how they even processed it. For a long time, anthropologistsContinue reading “Neanderthal Cooking and Flavoring 70kya?”
Did Cooking and Eating Meat Make Us Who We Are Today?
Did Homo erectus’ habit of increased meat eating lead to our body structure, and mental capacities that we have and know of today? A new paper claims perhaps this idea is not as correct as we thought…
Did Cooking Make Us Human?
In “Catching Fire, How Cooking Made Us Human” by Dr. Richard Wrangham, we learn about what is possibly the most important change in human, and pre-human history. Fire changed everything that our ancestors did, from how they digested food, to how they hunted and fended off predators. Fire changed how we viewed the world, it spurred on the formation of culture as we know it today, and led to massive dietary changes that allowed for the explosion in brain size we see between H. habilis and H. erectus in the fossil record. While there is little actual evidence of fire in the fossil record, at least until much more recently, it is difficult to say for sure just exactly how the first hominins came across fire, and how they used it. What possessed them to take something that they knew would be so dangerous, and apply it in the ways that they did? We may never know for sure, but we can look at the biological changes that have brought us to be where we are today, and we can trace the very roots of our many cultures to sitting around the campfire, preparing food. Dr. Wrangham proposes the “Cooking Hypothesis” in this book, which since its publication has been widely accepted, and changed the way we view early Homo. While fire may date back much earlier than we know currently, the basis of its effects remains the same. We would not be the same without fire, it has fueled our evolution and fuels the machine of our modern world. But how?
World of Paleoanthropology 