Did Cooking Make Us Human?

We are the only species on earth that cooks its food - and we are also the cleverest species on the planet.

The question is: do we cook because we're clever and imaginative, or are we clever and imaginative because our ancestors discovered cooking?

Horizon examines the evidence that our ancestors' changing diet and their mastery of fire prompted anatomical and neurological changes that resulted in taking us out of the trees and into the kitchen.

Homo habilis was about a metre tall with long, swinging arms – not much to look at, apparently, but clever. Habilis had a bigger brain (50% bigger) than his forebear, Australopithecus. Was this down to his diet?

In Did Cooking Make Us Human?, a clutch of determined scientists set out to discover the...

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