Why did the brains of our human ancestors experience a growth spurt some 1.8 million years ago, granting us intelligence that’s superior to that of other primates? Credit “the invention of cooking,” Brazilian neuroscientist Suzana Herculano-Houzel tells The Guardian (U.K.). She and her colleagues found that heating food—which speeds up chewing and digestion, and allows the body to absorb more nutrition per bite—enabled Homo erectus to ingest the calories needed to feed the human brain. (CLICK BELOW TO READ MORE)
Our brain makes up 2 percent of our body mass, or five times the proportion of a gorilla’s brain, and consumes 20 percent of our total energy intake—more than twice the percentage a gorilla’s brain requires. After examining the caloric requirements of a host of primate species, the researchers determined that had our Homo erectus ancestors stuck to a raw-food diet, they would have had to spend more than nine hours per day just ingesting food in order to fuel their larger brains. “Cooking,” Herculano-Houzel says, is the “most obvious answer to the question, ‘What can humans do that no other species does?’
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