What Makes Us Human? Cooking, Study Says
Surge in brain size 1.8 million years ago linked to cooking, study says.
According to a new study, a surge in human brain size that occurred roughly 1.8 million years ago can be directly linked to the innovation of cooking.
"Much more than harnessing fire, what truly allowed us to become human was using fire for cooking," said study co-author Suzana Herculano-Houzel, a neuroscientist at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
(Related: "Cooking Gave Humans Edge Over Apes?")
But since there are only so many hours in the day, a primate can only become so big. A gorilla, for instance, is the largest primate. Yet it can only eat for ten hours a day, due to limited food supply, the time it takes to
