We Are (What We Are) Because We Cook

Slate review:

That is the bewildering, but brilliant, idea proposed by Richard Wrangham, a Harvard-based biological anthropologist. In Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, he proposes that the big breakthrough of almost 2 million years ago that generated another 1,000 ideas and changed who we are forever was this: Drop food in fire, eat it.

...Women, he observes, do most of the cooking in most societies (he describes it as a historic phenomenon, not a biological necessity), and the division of labor around food could have been the beginning of the marriage contract and the prototypical human household. If this is the case, Wrangham argues, marriage is not a primitive contract to ensure paternity, as most anthropologists would argue, but primarily an economic contract.

...There is nothing wrong with free-range eggs, farmers market preserves, or the slow-food movement; complicated cooking and leisurely eating are wonderful pastimes. But come 8 p.m., the natural thing to do is drop food in microwave, eat it, and then go read a book.