Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

October 4, 2025

by Richard Wrangham

Pg 247
Human males significantly more aggressive than females, and have wider faces.

Bonobos only great ape that females can defend food from males, even though smaller.

Male Bonobos have relatively narrow faces compared to more aggressive chimps.

https://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Made-Human/dp/0465013627

Professor Richard Wrangham of Harvard thinks we would have been using fire routinely not just 50,000 or 400,000 years ago, but two million years ago. In his book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, he argues that it was the act of cooking that transformed our ancestors from ape-like creatures into the large-brained Homo erectus, for the simple reason that cooking makes it easier to extract energy and nutrition from our meals. Ultimately allowing our ancestors to evolve larger brains in concordance with smaller guts.

Wrangham offers a provocative take on evolution—suggesting that, rather than humans creating civilized technology, civilized technology created us.