When Did Humans Start Cooking? It Changed Our Brains

When did humans start cooking, and did it really build the human brain? Some scientists believe fire and cooked food gave our ancestors the energy to grow bigger brains. In this video, we go back two million years to look at the clues. Every animal eats raw food. Only humans cook. Find out why that one habit may have changed everything. CHAPTERS 0:00 The one animal that cooks 0:30 Life two million years ago 1:05 The chewing problem 2:00 Why the brain is so expensive 2:45 When did humans control fire? 3:20 Why cooked food gives more energy 4:00 The cooking hypothesis 4:50 The raw food clue 5:20 Do all scientists agree? What do you think: did fire make us smart, or was it meat and tools? Tell me in the comments! Subscribe for more stories from the deep past. SOURCES AND FURTHER READING Richard Wrangham, "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human" (2009) Aiello and Wheeler, "The Expensive Tissue Hypothesis" (1995) Zohar et al., evidence of cooked fish at Gesher Benot Ya'aqov, Israel (Nature Ecology and Evolution, 2022) Fonseca-Azevedo and Herculano-Houzel, metabolic constraint on primate brains (PNAS, 2012) #humanevolution #earlyhumans #cooking