Ron Wormus <prot...@frii.com> wrote: > > Chimpanzees do not have fire and so do not cook their food & must devote > most of their day to chewing & digesting a lot of raw food. Mastering fire > & cooking food has allowed humans to quickly fuel our large brains using a > short digestive system.
True! And we are so dependent on cooking, we could not survive without it. It has altered our very anatomy, including the teeth and stomach. Here is an excellent little book about that: "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human" http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Fire-Cooking-Human-ebook/dp/B0028P9BE6/ref=sr_1_1 Some interesting points from that book: Most animals, such as rats and chimps, prefer cooked food. And it tends to make them obese. Chimps that live in Georgia at the Yerkes center have no trouble making and controlling fires. They do not burn themselves or let the fire go out. They use butane lighters to start the fire, but I expect they could use a primitive technique such as rubbing sticks together. So they have the intelligence. They might have discovered fire long ago. If they had discovered it millions of years ago they would not be chimps in their present form, would they? - Jed
