Eat Your Veg

There are a lot of crazy and exciting theories about the course of human evolution...'we started walking on two feet because we were trying to wade around in marshes' and 'we got bigger brains when we moved into cold weather' are classics...

But my new favorite theory is that people really got started on the road to success when they began to cook food over fire.  Not just any food, either...we're talking tubers!  You would think it would be meat, wouldn't you.  Apparently though figuring out how to roast root vegetables allowed early humans access to all sorts of delicious and nutritious things that can't be got at too easily without fire.  And some tongs, presumably.

Not long after evidence starts showing up that people are eating cooked tubers, brains get bigger, populations increase, and women grow to approximately the size of men...this last one is key to changes in human dynamics (they tell me), because in species where females are smaller than males, polygynous is the rule and societies are run by an alpha male.  When females and males are approximately the same size, however, pair bonding is prevalent and a more cooperative social system tends to flourish.

My guess is that the ladies figured out the fire and veg business while the men were off 'hunting' (or whatever they're calling it these days), and then traded their cooking skills for cooperation with the other household duties.  Prometheus and his fennel-stalk...so close and yet so far.