Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from housetop works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick in.
Speaker 1: Today is going to be part two of a two
Speaker 1: part episode about the scientific history of fire on Earth. Earth,
Speaker 1: as we learned in our last episode, probably as far
Speaker 1: as we know, the only place in the universe there
Speaker 1: is fire. Could be other places we don't know about,
Speaker 1: but here it is, right. Yeah, there are three elements
Speaker 1: required for for fire. You need the fuel, you need
Speaker 1: the heat, you need the oxygen, the tri force of fire,
Speaker 1: the tri force of fire. Earth didn't always have it,
Speaker 1: but then the conditions coalesced to where they were available,
Speaker 1: and then we had fire. And furthermore, fire, as far
Speaker 1: as we can tell, is an essential component of high technology. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you're talking about you know, creating, you know, smelting ors,
Speaker 1: creating settle towards metal tools. All of this requires that
Speaker 1: the alchemy of these creations requires fire. So it is
Speaker 1: very much clear that fire is an essential part of
Speaker 1: the technological profile of the human species on Earth, you know,
Speaker 1: beyond stone tools. Fire is how we get stuff done.
Speaker 1: But there are I mean it has symbolic power too.
Speaker 1: I mean we get in the whole idea of Promethean fire,
Speaker 1: like it's this thing that God has brought us. It
Speaker 1: is the power of power that is from beyond us
Speaker 1: that then fills us up. We talk about the fire
Speaker 1: and the spark of human existence, of the soul of compassion,
Speaker 1: all of these of these complex ideas are are are
Speaker 1: wound up in this notion of fire. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: the first thing I think we should talk about today
Speaker 1: is is this concept of the divine spark, not so
Speaker 1: much in the theological sense, but in the literal sense,
Speaker 1: Like what what is the human brain look like on fire?
Speaker 1: What what is the fire drug done for us? And
Speaker 1: I think it's been long recognized that that control mastery
Speaker 1: over fire is one of the essential ingredients in the
Speaker 1: human animal as it exists today. One of there are
Speaker 1: things that really makes a stand apart um alongside language. Right,
Speaker 1: if you had to pick just two things that really
Speaker 1: make humans different than all the other animals, give me
Speaker 1: fire and give me some words to talk about fire with,
Speaker 1: right to to say while we're setting you on fire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But even and this idea goes back a long way
Speaker 1: so Charles Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man in
Speaker 1: eight quote the speaking of Humankind quote, he has discovered
Speaker 1: the art of making fire, by which hard and stringy
Speaker 1: roots can be rendered digestible and poisonous roots or herbs innocuous.
Speaker 1: This discovery of fire probably the greatest ever made by man,
Speaker 1: accepting language, dates from before the dawn of history. I
Speaker 1: think we can all agree on that, right, fire comes
Speaker 1: before history. But exactly how long before history? And one
Speaker 1: thing you might be surprised to learn is that this
Speaker 1: is not a settled question. Exactly when fire emerges in
Speaker 1: human history is still up for debate. Yeah. The predictions
Speaker 1: vary from a brown from a near forty thousand years
Speaker 1: ago to four hundred thousand, five hundred thousand, or even
Speaker 1: in the in the very extreme cases one point six. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so they're all over the map. I looked at
Speaker 1: one paper by A. J. A. J. Gaulet, who is
Speaker 1: an anthropologist and archaeologists called the discovery of fire by
Speaker 1: humans a long and convoluted process in philosophical Transation Transactions
Speaker 1: of the Royal Society b from sixteen and he looks
Speaker 1: over a lot of the evidence and says so much
Speaker 1: archaeological investigation into the emergence of fire has been very
Speaker 1: focused on the search for hearths, right, this is this
Speaker 1: is the big thing you want to find as evidence
Speaker 1: of of hominins using fire, is these fireplaces. Hearths a
Speaker 1: place where you put all your fuel together and you'd
Speaker 1: burn it. Evidence for hearts seems to appear around zero
Speaker 1: point seven to zero point four million years ago, or
Speaker 1: I guess we could just say four hundred thousand, seven
Speaker 1: hundred thousand years ago, But that's not necessarily the earliest
Speaker 1: emergence of fire use among humans. That's just when we
Speaker 1: start finding these fireplaces. In fact, evidence of burning, Galllet
Speaker 1: says appears at archaeological sites starting around one point five
Speaker 1: million years ago. But it's it's kind of difficult because
Speaker 1: just using fire doesn't necessarily always leave good evidence that
Speaker 1: can be found, you know, more than a million years later,
Speaker 1: So you really have to be on the lookout for
Speaker 1: things that are difficult to find, and they might not
Speaker 1: always leave a trace at all. Yeah, Like as with
Speaker 1: a lot of things in the fossil record, in the
Speaker 1: archaeological record, it's kind of a crap shoot as to
Speaker 1: whether it's actually going to be preserved and then if
Speaker 1: it's preserved, it's going to be discovered. Right. But so
Speaker 1: Galllet says that, you know, one way to think about
Speaker 1: it might be that it's not just that we had
Speaker 1: fire and then we didn't. But there's sort of a
Speaker 1: three stage process for the human acquisition of fire. And
Speaker 1: uh so Gallant says, first, what about fire foraging? So
Speaker 1: fire foraging is is an interesting first step in the
Speaker 1: acquisition of fire because it doesn't require the control of fire,
Speaker 1: just an attraction to it. So what would you have
Speaker 1: in mind if you hear the words fire foraging? You're
Speaker 1: going around looking for fire, not exactly your or you
Speaker 1: might be following fire around, but instead you go to
Speaker 1: a place where a wildfire has burned, and then you
Speaker 1: gain the chance for a bonus of free resources. I
Speaker 1: kind of think about it how like if you're ever
Speaker 1: in a video game like Legend of Zelda, and you
Speaker 1: go around and you like burn a bunch of bushes
Speaker 1: or something, and then under the bushes there might be
Speaker 1: some rupees or some goodies something to find there. This
Speaker 1: is kind of what that is like. So you go
Speaker 1: to a place where wildfire is burning and there might
Speaker 1: be bird eggs or rodents or lizards or other small
Speaker 1: animals exposed that you can eat, and it might also
Speaker 1: render these So it renders these resources more visible obviously
Speaker 1: because it eliminates cover easier to obtain and possibly also
Speaker 1: more digestible by accidental cooking. But there's a reason that
Speaker 1: early humans and and hominids would have been drawn to
Speaker 1: a blaze. They would have seen the smoke on the
Speaker 1: horizon really through some sort of wildfire scenario going on,
Speaker 1: and they would have sought it out from sources. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we can talk about some modern analogies to how
Speaker 1: these these creatures may have uh felt about fire by
Speaker 1: looking at some some modern primates today, but we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that later in the episode. And just for analogies
Speaker 1: in non human animals in nature, there are other animals
Speaker 1: that do this there, for example, birds that are known
Speaker 1: as fire followers. You know, fire foraging among avians makes
Speaker 1: it seem like it could easily have been done by
Speaker 1: hominins a long time ago too. But then so Gablet
Speaker 1: also says, you know, you've got a couple of stages
Speaker 1: after fire foraging. You've got he says, quote social slash
Speaker 1: domestic hearth, fire for protection and cooking. Okay, so you
Speaker 1: have a fire that you can gather around, there's warmth,
Speaker 1: there's light, and there is there's heat for cooking food.
Speaker 1: And then third, finally, fires used as tools in the
Speaker 1: technological processes like firing pottery or making metal tools or
Speaker 1: things like that are creating a you know, adhesives on
Speaker 1: things that take fire to make. But I think that
Speaker 1: thing about fire foraging is an interesting first step because
Speaker 1: it sort of shows you how you could maybe bridge
Speaker 1: the gap between a primate species that doesn't understand anything
Speaker 1: about fire and one that starts to use fire. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't have to go just straight from being afraid
Speaker 1: of fire to using it. Technologically, you sort of have
Speaker 1: this bridge, right, a behavioral bridge from one to the other. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One is tempted to make an analogy to the taming
Speaker 1: of a wild animal. At first, you know, you know
Speaker 1: what it is, you learn, you learn to be a
Speaker 1: little more comfortable around it, you know what kind of
Speaker 1: distance to give it, uh, how much space needs to
Speaker 1: be between you and the animal. And then eventually you
Speaker 1: get to the point where you have worked out a
Speaker 1: relationship with the animal, you have tamed it, and that's
Speaker 1: sort of what happens with fire over time. So you
Speaker 1: can imagine going from simply seeking out the fire, keeping
Speaker 1: a distance from the fire because you know that even
Speaker 1: though it it unwraps these resources for you, it itself
Speaker 1: is hot and burns you. And then over time you
Speaker 1: become comfortable enough with it to start playing with a
Speaker 1: little bit, sticking sticks into it, and then eventually even
Speaker 1: capturing portions of it and figuring out ways to utilize it.
Speaker 1: This is an interesting thing to think about. Commonly, it
Speaker 1: is very common. I bet you listening right now have this,
Speaker 1: have had this experience. It is extremely common for humans
Speaker 1: to want to play with fire. I I know, I
Speaker 1: feel this feeling like there's a there's a campfire, and
Speaker 1: you just feel this urge to kind of like poke
Speaker 1: at it with a stick or something. That I had
Speaker 1: this experience with my my son recently at a a
Speaker 1: fall celebration with some family. Uh, they had a camp
Speaker 1: fire set up and we had some sticks with marshmallows,
Speaker 1: and you know, instructed him on how to cook the marshmallow.
Speaker 1: But then I at the end of it, I said,
Speaker 1: now you can just poke the stick around in the fire,
Speaker 1: because I know that's really having been a little boy myself,
Speaker 1: and still having that little boy within me. I know
Speaker 1: that that's really what we want to do. We don't
Speaker 1: want to cook the marshmallows so much as we're going
Speaker 1: to just poke the ever loving hell out of that fire,
Speaker 1: you know, and watch the sparks rise up and watch
Speaker 1: coal's collapse and that, I mean, that's the experience. But
Speaker 1: I feel like this is something that's not just like
Speaker 1: a like a cognitively obtained behavior like using an an
Speaker 1: Excel spreadsheet might be. It feels instinctual, right, and it
Speaker 1: certainly does to me. I think you would report if
Speaker 1: small children seem to do it without prompting. There's this
Speaker 1: this instinctual draw to play with fire. Why on earth
Speaker 1: would that be an instinct? I mean, instinct is generally
Speaker 1: something that has been selected for by evolution, So why
Speaker 1: would evolution favor this instinct to go mess around with
Speaker 1: something that could burn you or even kill you unless
Speaker 1: there's some kind of compensating benefit, And it seems like
Speaker 1: for humans there probably has been, right because you compared
Speaker 1: it to taming an animal. We haven't just tamed an animal,
Speaker 1: we have tamed a demon. Right, Yeah, one is it
Speaker 1: wants them to think of the gin that has a
Speaker 1: fire that like a genie that one has has captured
Speaker 1: and and and enslaved for your own purposes. Pretty much
Speaker 1: with the fire demon in uh Was, which was the
Speaker 1: Miyazaki movie with the fire demon not spirited away but
Speaker 1: how's moving castle? Oh yeah, I remember that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's a good fire demon. It's a
Speaker 1: good fire demon. Yeah, and they put him to work.
Speaker 1: But it but it also, like a gin, grants your wishes, right,
Speaker 1: So let's let's take a moment to think about some
Speaker 1: of the wishes that have been granted by the demon fire. Um.
Speaker 1: Some of these we've touched on already. If we called on,
Speaker 1: do we have to phrase them in a way that
Speaker 1: they can't come back to it? Us? Um No, because
Speaker 1: fire does come back to bite if there's no there's
Speaker 1: no avoiding that make me a cheese sentimatech So, first
Speaker 1: of all, the ability to cast light upon an uncertain,
Speaker 1: frightening and death filled night. Yeah, I mean think back
Speaker 1: to I think of this anytime around the campfire. Just
Speaker 1: think of like the primordial environment. You're huddled around this light,
Speaker 1: this heat source, and then it's gives you the ability
Speaker 1: to cast light on a world it's full of dangers,
Speaker 1: human dangers as well as predators, as well as just
Speaker 1: the problem of you tripping over a root and dying
Speaker 1: in the night and then being consumed by predators. One
Speaker 1: thing is, without fire, you can just pretty much bet
Speaker 1: that humans would not exist at certain latitudes, right right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Fire gives us the ability to warm ourselves in increasingly
Speaker 1: colder environments, so you're no longer forced to range south
Speaker 1: in the winter or to stick to natural refuges of
Speaker 1: thermal springs. That's uh, that's something that I remember coming up,
Speaker 1: been studying saunas before. Like the long history of our
Speaker 1: association with with geothermal vents is that like these were
Speaker 1: these were little uh redoubts of of heat and civilization
Speaker 1: that early people could could range between. Interesting. But with fire,
Speaker 1: you can create your own little redoubt of warmth anywhere
Speaker 1: you want to, uh, in a in an increasingly chilly environment. Now,
Speaker 1: a big one to come back to that cheese sandwich,
Speaker 1: you mentioned the ability to externalize human digestion through the
Speaker 1: use of cooking. Like, that's that's one way I like
Speaker 1: to think of of of cooking, you know, because it's
Speaker 1: more than just oh, I put some char in this cheese,
Speaker 1: and now it's it's what's wonderful, and it is wonderful,
Speaker 1: But it goes far beyond that. Cooking makes char on cheese?
Speaker 1: Is that wonderful char on steak? Don't? Well? Maybe not char.
Speaker 1: You've had cheese sticks, right, and you know where the
Speaker 1: cheese comes off, the grilled cheese, and it kind of
Speaker 1: hardens into this you know what, I doubted you, but
Speaker 1: now I know you know what, You're tough. That's that's delicious. However,
Speaker 1: it doesn't really break down like the core benefits of
Speaker 1: cooking fairly man, because a lot of those come down
Speaker 1: to meat. Uh. Cooking meat makes it easier to digest,
Speaker 1: It reduces the cost of meat digestion. Just coming at
Speaker 1: it from you know, an economic bio energy standpoint, It
Speaker 1: compromises the structural integrity of the tissue by gelatinizing the collagen.
Speaker 1: Cooking also cleanses foods. It destroys parasites, pathogens, and even
Speaker 1: renders many natural toxins harmless. Poison fruits become foods, etcetera. Okay.
Speaker 1: On top of this, fire enables the transformation of resources
Speaker 1: such as raw or into weapons, which can then be
Speaker 1: used for your hunt. Uh. Fire eventually fuel the Industrial Revolution.
Speaker 1: The burning of fossil fuels propelled us into the modern age,
Speaker 1: into the space age. Even so, if if man looms
Speaker 1: large uh in a in a grand scheme of things,
Speaker 1: it's because the demon fire stands about behind it, casting
Speaker 1: a shadow across the world and beyond, as Rocky Aerrison
Speaker 1: would say, and for the fire demon. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: one particular aspect of what you just talked about I
Speaker 1: want to look at is cooking, cooking as a feature
Speaker 1: of the history and development of the human species. So
Speaker 1: there is a Harvard primatologist named Richard Wrangham and also
Speaker 1: a Harvard biologist Rachel Carmody, and they've put forward this
Speaker 1: interesting hypothesis I was reading about about how cooking by
Speaker 1: way of harnessing of fire made us into the humans
Speaker 1: we are today. And so this is not considered proven.
Speaker 1: There are arguments made against it, but I think it's
Speaker 1: really interesting and worth taking a look at. So how
Speaker 1: could cooking make us into the creatures we are today?
Speaker 1: Especially from a mental point of view. Well, one thing
Speaker 1: to think about is how your body at a total
Speaker 1: state of rest is just a vampire. It is absolutely
Speaker 1: energy ravenous, and I think sometimes people don't realize how
Speaker 1: much energy is burned just by being alive, just by
Speaker 1: the steady processes like circulation, digestion, and homeostasis. So I
Speaker 1: put together an example just to illustrate how much energy
Speaker 1: this takes comparatively, uh, and I used a couple of
Speaker 1: calorie counters provided by the Mayo Clinic and Runners World
Speaker 1: websites with you know, so take this with the warning
Speaker 1: that these types of apps offer sort of general estimates
Speaker 1: shouldn't be taken as perfect or exact, but based on
Speaker 1: this imagine you are a thirty year old female who
Speaker 1: is five ft six and weighs a hundred and forty
Speaker 1: five pounds. You burn a hundred about seventeen fifty calories
Speaker 1: a day at rest, one thousand and seven fifty calories
Speaker 1: doing nothing. If you just lie in bed and watch
Speaker 1: what would you watch all day? A very low energy
Speaker 1: thing to watch on TV? I don't know, Buffy watching Buffy.
Speaker 1: Just watch Buffy all day. Now, to burn that same
Speaker 1: amount of energy through exercise, a hundred and forty five
Speaker 1: pound adult would have to run about sixteen miles at
Speaker 1: a pace of six miles per hour. The entire time.
Speaker 1: That's more than half of a marathon race. So I
Speaker 1: don't know, it just doesn't seem like laying there watching
Speaker 1: Buffy all day is about the same amount of energy
Speaker 1: work as running more than half of a marathon. But
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, It's kind of like when you look
Speaker 1: at like business expenses and look at the sheer costs
Speaker 1: of just keeping the lights on the overhead, the overhead
Speaker 1: of a picul of business, the overhead for business human
Speaker 1: is uh is pretty staggering. Yeah, and so what are
Speaker 1: what where is all that energy going? Well, it's like
Speaker 1: we said, it powers a lot of different things that
Speaker 1: power circulation, digestion, respiration. But one of the most energy
Speaker 1: hungry organs in the human body, maybe the most energy
Speaker 1: hungry I've seen different claims about that, UH is the brain.
Speaker 1: So despite being only a very small percentage of the
Speaker 1: average human body weight, I think I've seen some like
Speaker 1: two percent or so, it regularly uses around a fifth
Speaker 1: of the body's total available metabolic energy. Of twenty of
Speaker 1: all the energy your body uses is going to the brain.
Speaker 1: I'll lighten up those synapses, things going back and forth.
Speaker 1: And according to one study I read from n each
Speaker 1: unit of brain tissue. So that's unit by mass uses
Speaker 1: about twenty two times the amount of metabolic energy that
Speaker 1: is used by the equivalent amount of muscle tissue. Being
Speaker 1: smart is very costly from an energy perspective, and we
Speaker 1: know that all organisms live in a very tight energy economy. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot, there's not room for a lot
Speaker 1: of wasted effort or even any wasted effort really when
Speaker 1: it comes to an organism. Right. Uh, so we know now,
Speaker 1: we know that the brain needs a large amount of
Speaker 1: energy in order to be powerful and formidable and intelligent,
Speaker 1: like a big primate brain is. But if you go
Speaker 1: back a few decades, scientists noticed this curious fact. So
Speaker 1: they said, when you look across species with varying rates
Speaker 1: of what's called encephalization, meaning you know, investing evolutionarily in
Speaker 1: a large, powerful brain blowing the head up, incephalized mammals
Speaker 1: don't seem to show a corresponding increase in their basal
Speaker 1: metabolic rate. So you make a bigger brain, but you're
Speaker 1: in you're investing in this energy hungry organ but you're
Speaker 1: not showing greater energy needs than a similar sized animal
Speaker 1: that doesn't invest in encephalization. So for a for a comparison,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like if you have two families that
Speaker 1: live next door to one another, and you know they
Speaker 1: both have the same income, and suddenly one of the
Speaker 1: families buys a yacht. So you're kind of thinking, how
Speaker 1: where did that want for that? Yeah, what's this other
Speaker 1: line of revenue that is that is enabling them to
Speaker 1: make this purchase? Right, So, there was a big influential
Speaker 1: paper in nineteen that offered a potential solution to this,
Speaker 1: a hypothesis to explain this, and it was known as
Speaker 1: the expensive tissue hypothesis. This was by A. Leslie C. I.
Speaker 1: L Oh and Peter Wheeler in Current Anthropology. And so
Speaker 1: what they said is one way you could pay for
Speaker 1: the brain would be to cut investments in other quote
Speaker 1: expensive organs, such as the gut. Right, So, a powerful,
Speaker 1: costly digestive system is required if you want to get
Speaker 1: the maximum energy out of bad food. Essentially, so if
Speaker 1: you've got raw, tough, hard to digest, low quality foods,
Speaker 1: you need a big, powerful gut to get all the
Speaker 1: energy out of them. But if you can imagine an
Speaker 1: organism could convert most of its diet away from all
Speaker 1: of that junk into high quality, high nutrition, easy to
Speaker 1: digest foods. Then it could cut what it invests in
Speaker 1: the gut and the digestive system, and I'll and get
Speaker 1: cut down that budget and invest all of those savings
Speaker 1: into the brain. So the original proponents of the expensive
Speaker 1: tissue hypothesis, they were focused on meat to Their idea
Speaker 1: is that you know, these hominins converted a large part
Speaker 1: of their diet from tough, hard to digest plant matter
Speaker 1: over to meat and animal products, and they could get
Speaker 1: more nutrition with less work for the digestive system. I
Speaker 1: can imagine that the TV advertisement for for meat at
Speaker 1: the time. Yea more bang for your bite, get smart
Speaker 1: quick with meat. Right. It sounds like a fallout kind
Speaker 1: of yeah. But so here's where Rangum and Carmody, That
Speaker 1: where their hypothesis comes in. What if instead of just
Speaker 1: upgrading to meat, what if one of the significant upgrades
Speaker 1: was too cooked food, allowing for easier digestion and a
Speaker 1: bigger brain. So about one point seven million years ago
Speaker 1: or so, about the time of the emergence of Homo erectus,
Speaker 1: when the modern human body plan first shows up. This
Speaker 1: is when you see human bodies that are shaped more
Speaker 1: or less like Homo sapiens are today cooking Under this
Speaker 1: hypod this is could have entered the scene, making difficult foods,
Speaker 1: tough roots and tubers and stuff available on the open
Speaker 1: savannah into a digestible, a real thing that you could
Speaker 1: digest and get good energy from as long as you
Speaker 1: could cook it. Now, I said that this hypothesis was
Speaker 1: not fully accepted everywhere, and that's the case. So from
Speaker 1: what I'm reading more research has seriously called into question
Speaker 1: many aspects of our previous understanding of the expensive tissue hypothesis.
Speaker 1: There appears to be a period of right now conflicting
Speaker 1: evidence and reinterpretation. Just doing a search for scientific articles
Speaker 1: published within the last four years or so, I found
Speaker 1: a bunch claiming to find evidence for the expensive tissue
Speaker 1: hypothesis within certain species or groups of animals, others claiming
Speaker 1: not to find any evidence within certain species or groups. So,
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell, this one is up
Speaker 1: in the air. Um And with respect to the cooking hypothesis,
Speaker 1: one important piece of evidence would be that in order
Speaker 1: to sort of track within cephalization history with the growing
Speaker 1: brains of our hominid ancestors, it would need to be
Speaker 1: supported by evidence of very early fire use in hominids.
Speaker 1: Now earlier, what did we say was the earliest known
Speaker 1: fire use. We saw those hearths, you know, four hundred thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred thousand years ago or so, we saw maybe
Speaker 1: evidence of burning going back earlier, maybe to one point
Speaker 1: five million years ago or something like that. But this
Speaker 1: would need to show fire use going way way back
Speaker 1: earlier than is generally accepted. But I would also say
Speaker 1: within the realm of possibility, maybe maybe you degree based
Speaker 1: on what we've read, well, I think the Yeah, their
Speaker 1: arguments on both sides that are interesting. One that I
Speaker 1: ran across just to base it in, like a very
Speaker 1: simple study from two thousand seven in which the researchers
Speaker 1: studied effects of cooking and also grinding the meals of
Speaker 1: a Burmese python. So they found that just cooking the
Speaker 1: meat and these beef, just cooking the beef alone decreased
Speaker 1: the cost of digestion absorption and assimilation by twelve point
Speaker 1: seven percent. Grinding it decreased it by twelve point four percent,
Speaker 1: for a total culinary discount of twenty three point for
Speaker 1: four percent. Okay, so they've externalized some of the digestion
Speaker 1: of this cow for a Burmese python, right, and certainly
Speaker 1: you know Burmese pythons to not to cook on their own,
Speaker 1: but but probably right, well yeah, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: except maybe in the story books. But but yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the interesting thing about this is that on one
Speaker 1: handed sort of backs backs up these ideas of yes,
Speaker 1: there's a there is a deaf and definite evolutionary advantage
Speaker 1: in cooking meat, but it's in looking back, like the
Speaker 1: history of of culinary arts and culinary preparation, if you
Speaker 1: can't really discount the grinding, the the the the dissimilation
Speaker 1: of food as well like being able to break foods
Speaker 1: down into not only cooking them into forms that are
Speaker 1: more palpable and more consumable, but also just physically altering them.
Speaker 1: And and I can't help but think of of the
Speaker 1: use of fire and therefore smoke as a as a
Speaker 1: as a food preservation technique as well, being able to
Speaker 1: smoke your food so that you have that nutritional power
Speaker 1: up for later, uh, perhaps in a time when when
Speaker 1: they're when resources are less available. So I think I
Speaker 1: think it becomes a more complex pattern as you see
Speaker 1: culinary practices evolve within early people. Yeah, that's that's not
Speaker 1: kind of take on it anyway. Well, I mean another
Speaker 1: thing to think about though, this is, uh, this is
Speaker 1: probably not super scientific, but just to check your own reflections.
Speaker 1: As long as we're talking about human nature, we asked
Speaker 1: this about poking fire. How often do you really just
Speaker 1: want to eat all your food raw? Is that a
Speaker 1: desire you have or do you feel a deep instinctual
Speaker 1: desire for cooked food? Well? Not fruit, I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: rather I have to be talked into say cooking pineapple fruit.
Speaker 1: Fruit is often the exception, right, that's often the exception
Speaker 1: given to this statement that humans tend to prefer cooked foods,
Speaker 1: and humans in fact aren't the only animals that seem
Speaker 1: to prefer cooked foods. In fact, I found one study
Speaker 1: from actually from also in Proceedings of the Royal Society
Speaker 1: be called Cognitive Capacities for Cooking and Chimpanzees. And so
Speaker 1: one of the things they talked about in this study
Speaker 1: is they said, okay, so we've got chimpanzees, and we
Speaker 1: found out across nine studies that chimpanzees prefer cooked food.
Speaker 1: They like to cook food better than raw food. They
Speaker 1: also found that the Chimpanzees can understand that raw food
Speaker 1: is transformed into cooked food through cooking, and so they
Speaker 1: can sort of generalize this understanding and other context They
Speaker 1: can get the point that if I have a piece
Speaker 1: of raw food, cooking can turn it into cooked food.
Speaker 1: They also will wait for cooked food. They will delay
Speaker 1: gratification if the reward is the food being cooked. They
Speaker 1: will give uper all food in order to see it
Speaker 1: transformed into cooked food. And they can transport and save
Speaker 1: or all food in anticipation of future cooking. So I
Speaker 1: don't know that that seems to to go along with
Speaker 1: this sort of instinctual thing that I think we all
Speaker 1: feel and that I think has been found in other
Speaker 1: animals too, that you don't just get more out of
Speaker 1: digestion when food is cooked, but you have this natural
Speaker 1: preference for it. Yeah, and certainly that's that matches up
Speaker 1: with human experience. We have this primal relationship with with cooking.
Speaker 1: We want to cook our food, I mean, we have
Speaker 1: Michael Pollen in particular has a number of means. He's
Speaker 1: written and produced documentaries that touch on this time and
Speaker 1: time again. We have this this kind of inborn desire
Speaker 1: to want to manipulate our foods via cooking, transform them
Speaker 1: into these other forms. And when that, when those techniques,
Speaker 1: when those practices leave our lives, we we we feel
Speaker 1: drawn to h to commune with him another way, such
Speaker 1: as watching a cooking shows all the time, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, you know. Speaking of Michael Paul and I
Speaker 1: one of the articles I read about the cooking hypothesis,
Speaker 1: and this was from a few years ago, so he
Speaker 1: might have changed his mind since then, but at the
Speaker 1: time of the article he said that he was he
Speaker 1: felt pretty convinced by the cooking hypothesis, this hypothesis that
Speaker 1: cooking is sort of an evolved biological trait that coincides
Speaker 1: with greater incphilization or investment in brain tissue in humans. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I said, I think there's a strong case to
Speaker 1: be made there. So earlier I mentioned that paper by
Speaker 1: Galllet about the history of acquiring fire by by humans,
Speaker 1: and he's the one who talked about the fire foraging bridge,
Speaker 1: and he mentions one way that that might play into
Speaker 1: the cooking hypothesis that I think is interesting. So I
Speaker 1: just want to read a section from his worker. He says,
Speaker 1: quote the analogy with other animals might suggest that in
Speaker 1: the first instance, early hominins would go to fires simply
Speaker 1: to take advantage of any additional opportunities of gaining prey,
Speaker 1: regardless of what are the resources were cooked. For example,
Speaker 1: the fire might reveal a clutch of eggs, so much
Speaker 1: better if it has baked them. Uh that would that
Speaker 1: technically be baked if the shell is still on. I
Speaker 1: don't know. That seems kind of gross, but I've never
Speaker 1: really done that before. Maybe, yeah, I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It would be kind of like a boiled egg. I guess, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I've never seen it on the menu
Speaker 1: baked eggs, but I've never seen it in the shell
Speaker 1: on the menu. Yeah, well except in a boiled egg, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: but not but not like over an open flame. Interesting, somehow,
Speaker 1: it seems like it would explode. I don't know why
Speaker 1: I think that. Well, that's an experiment for some of
Speaker 1: our listeners to fill us in about, or that's an
Speaker 1: experiment for us to do on Facebook Live right here
Speaker 1: in the office. Open fire. But yeah, so anyway, gallet
Speaker 1: continues quote for insevilization. New cranial finds are altering the
Speaker 1: figures rapidly, but at the moment it would seem that
Speaker 1: the average cranial capacity for early Homo at one point
Speaker 1: eight million years ago, and so that's starring, you know,
Speaker 1: close to the time of the emergence of Homorectus is
Speaker 1: six hundred to six hundred and fifty cubic centimeters, which
Speaker 1: is forty two greater than for most apes and australiopithesnes
Speaker 1: other related animals at the time. And yet this is
Speaker 1: earlier than Richard Rangham's postulated date of one point seven
Speaker 1: million years ago for applying the cooking hypothesis. And then
Speaker 1: he concludes saying, perhaps the fire foraging is one important
Speaker 1: element and the cooking hypothesis comes into play more strongly later,
Speaker 1: but other factors operate alongside both. So this is talking
Speaker 1: about how these the fire foraging and the cooking hypothesis,
Speaker 1: if they're both, you know, correct models of of the
Speaker 1: history of humanity, how they sort of could fit together.
Speaker 1: They're like a jigsaw puzzle that led to the fire.
Speaker 1: I want to say, the fire regime that usually is
Speaker 1: another meaning that the fire regime within the command of
Speaker 1: human power and technology, and then the rest is history. Alright,
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to discuss us what it means to get fire.
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Speaker 1: we're back now. We all know what it means to
Speaker 1: get fired, but we don't necessarily often think about what
Speaker 1: it means to get fired. Do you ever really think
Speaker 1: about this, Robert like to get it to sort of
Speaker 1: understand what the deal with fire is. If I were
Speaker 1: to take my dog up to a big bond fire,
Speaker 1: I don't think he really understands how fire works. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, maybe I'm not giving him enough credit,
Speaker 1: but I don't know what you think about that. I
Speaker 1: feel like the ability to sort of get fired just
Speaker 1: basically get a sense of, Okay, here's what you can
Speaker 1: expect a fire to do, here's you know. Here, here's
Speaker 1: what you don't have to worry about. Here's what you
Speaker 1: do have to worry about in the presence of fire.
Speaker 1: That's not something animals usually tend to seem to understand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not convinced that my cat understands fire. And this
Speaker 1: is often one of the distinctions made between humans and
Speaker 1: other tool using animals is that humans are the only
Speaker 1: organisms on Earth that you know, of course, know how
Speaker 1: to use and control fire. Animals are often surprisingly clever,
Speaker 1: but their reaction to fire can be sort of characterized
Speaker 1: mostly by avoidance behaviors, and if not just by avoidance behaviors.
Speaker 1: There are some animals that might approach fire to try
Speaker 1: to find pray or something. They do seem to be
Speaker 1: purely reactive right that they're they're just acting on instinct.
Speaker 1: Most animals tend to avoid or flee fire or even
Speaker 1: the sound of fire. And it's been shown that elephants
Speaker 1: become distressed and released stress hormones in response to wildfire.
Speaker 1: But some research published in two thousand and ten by
Speaker 1: Jill Pruittz and Thomas Leduke I thought was very interesting
Speaker 1: in this regard because they observed savannah chimpanzees. So these
Speaker 1: are chimpanzees living on the savannah lands pan troglodites various
Speaker 1: in Fongoli Synegal, and they recorded their reactions during these
Speaker 1: two encounters with wildfires in March and April two thousand six.
Speaker 1: So you've got these savannah chimpanzees, they're living out on
Speaker 1: the plane is there in the shrub land, and and
Speaker 1: a wildfire comes along, and the researchers right that during
Speaker 1: these two encounters, the chimpanzees, unlike many other animals, reacted
Speaker 1: pretty much totally calmly in the presence of fire, and
Speaker 1: they would loiter near the edge of the fire and
Speaker 1: groom themselves they'd be, you know, a few meters away
Speaker 1: from the fire. They go fishing for termites, they'd eat
Speaker 1: some saba fruit even as smoke from the fire was
Speaker 1: coming up to block the sunlight, or maybe climbing a
Speaker 1: tree they've just been resting in a few minutes before.
Speaker 1: And they said that, you know, the chimps would move
Speaker 1: to stay out of the path of the fire as
Speaker 1: it traveled. Uh. And these brush brush fires came at
Speaker 1: the end of the dry season, so there's plenty of
Speaker 1: dry fuel all around, and the fires can travel actually
Speaker 1: rather quickly, But the chimps just didn't panic. Instead, they
Speaker 1: seemed to be totally confident in predicting the movements of
Speaker 1: the fire and thus avoiding it. Uh. And this doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they have an understanding of the chemistry of fire,
Speaker 1: but to some ex then it requires that they have
Speaker 1: this kind of unspoken, rudimentary understanding of how fire works.
Speaker 1: For instance, that it requires fuel to burn right, that
Speaker 1: if you get out of the way of maybe a
Speaker 1: connecting line between the fire and some other piece of fuel,
Speaker 1: it's not going to come towards you. And also that
Speaker 1: its movement can be predicted by things like the direction
Speaker 1: and speed of the wind and of course the location
Speaker 1: of the available fuel. So, in other words, it seemed
Speaker 1: like the chimps were conceptualizing fire. These chimpanzees were basically
Speaker 1: showing that they understand how fire works, like an environmental
Speaker 1: understanding of fire, and they knew how to give it
Speaker 1: an appropriate distance. They knew how to get out of
Speaker 1: its way but without panic. Though they certainly fall short
Speaker 1: of being able to exploit it in any real way,
Speaker 1: shape or form. Right, But they might not be as
Speaker 1: far off as you would imagine, because so the researchers
Speaker 1: set up sort of three steps they hypothesized for master fire,
Speaker 1: and the first is the step that they think that
Speaker 1: the chimpanzees have already mastered. Right. The first step is
Speaker 1: the conceptualization of fire, and they characterize this as an
Speaker 1: understanding of the behavior under varying conditions that would allow
Speaker 1: one to predict fire's movement, thus permitting activity in close
Speaker 1: proximity to the fire. Then, of course, the second step
Speaker 1: is the ability to control fire, and this would involve
Speaker 1: containing it, providing or depriving the fire of fuel, and
Speaker 1: the ability to put it out. And then third, finally,
Speaker 1: would be the ability to start a fire on your own,
Speaker 1: so conceptualization, control, and then starting at yourself. Right, So
Speaker 1: if we buy into this three step process, you can
Speaker 1: see that the chimps already seemed to be at step one.
Speaker 1: And what it would require for them to start gaining
Speaker 1: mastery over fire is they wouldn't necessarily already know have
Speaker 1: to know how to start a fire. I mean that's
Speaker 1: sort of advanced, difficult knowledge. But imagine if they could
Speaker 1: just start to figure out that, Hey, if I get
Speaker 1: some of this fire on a stick and wave it around,
Speaker 1: I can really scare off predators. Yeah, I mean, it's
Speaker 1: the basic Mogli scenario right, exactly enough, the tigers your
Speaker 1: Cohn with the with the burning branch. But that to
Speaker 1: me does not actually seem all that implausible as chimp behavior.
Speaker 1: I mean, that seems basically within primate tool use capability
Speaker 1: already using tools using sticks, Like what's the difference between
Speaker 1: poking a stick uh into a log to obtain termites
Speaker 1: versus sticking a stick into an active fire to obtain
Speaker 1: just a piece of its power? And they do seem
Speaker 1: to respect its power in another interesting way. So Prue
Speaker 1: It's speaking to Iowa State News about her research, was
Speaker 1: describing a thing that she observed, which was a fire
Speaker 1: dance being performed by one of the males of these chimpanzees.
Speaker 1: So she says, quote, chimps everywhere have what's called a
Speaker 1: rain dance. Jane Goodall, a famed primatologists, coined that term,
Speaker 1: and it's just big male display to show dominance. Males
Speaker 1: display all the time for a number of different reasons,
Speaker 1: but when there's a big thunderstorm approaching, they do this
Speaker 1: really exaggerated display. It's almost like slow motion. And when
Speaker 1: I was with this one party of chimps, the dominant
Speaker 1: male did the same sort of thing, but it was
Speaker 1: towards the fire, so I call it a fire dance.
Speaker 1: She also reports that she heard what seemed to her
Speaker 1: to be a unique vocalization that was made at the
Speaker 1: approaching fire that maybe in some way linked to, you know,
Speaker 1: like maybe a fire signal. And it's interesting too that
Speaker 1: there's this connection to with thunder that a thunderstorm and
Speaker 1: and a fire and the like. Is if there there's
Speaker 1: some connection there that is perceived ever so out, ever
Speaker 1: so foggily. The primates mind these powerful energetic forces of
Speaker 1: nature that you can sort of understand and be calm around,
Speaker 1: but you you also have to respect their power. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so there's also you can look this up online
Speaker 1: if you want. There's some videos of the chimps around
Speaker 1: the edge of the fire, and it's the fire is
Speaker 1: burning through the brush and you can see them just
Speaker 1: sort of lazing around, grooming, hanging out while this brush
Speaker 1: fire smolders a few meters away. It's pretty strange to see.
Speaker 1: But this also makes me wonder what underlies the ability
Speaker 1: of an organism to control fire, you know, so, like,
Speaker 1: what are the first steps? And it makes me think
Speaker 1: that the first prerequisite to an organism that's about to
Speaker 1: gain fire control or fire technology is probably just overcoming
Speaker 1: much older instinctual fire fire behaviors, which are avoidance behaviors
Speaker 1: and escape behaviors. Generally animals want to get away from fire.
Speaker 1: To control fire, you have to approach it and you
Speaker 1: have to remain near it. And I don't know, so
Speaker 1: that seems it's like there's this sort of suicidal first
Speaker 1: step on the road to the greatest unleashing of technological
Speaker 1: capability that could happen for an animal on earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you have to steal a portion of it,
Speaker 1: and then you have to contain it. You almost kind
Speaker 1: of have to kind of a domestication of the flame, yea,
Speaker 1: so conceptualization, the ability to control it may be sequestered
Speaker 1: in a hearth. But then of course that third step
Speaker 1: is the ability to start a fire. And then and
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting to just look at how pervasive that is,
Speaker 1: even though a lot of us would be kind of
Speaker 1: thrown for a loop if we had to produce it
Speaker 1: without tools or instruments. But basically every human society can
Speaker 1: produce fire basically. They're interestingly enough, there are some and
Speaker 1: I have to say they're some of these claims are dubious. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's some some controversy about these. But there have been
Speaker 1: claims that you have Aboriginal people of Tasmania as well
Speaker 1: as the Sentinalise people of the Adaman Islands. This is
Speaker 1: a south eastern part of the Bay of bengal Um.
Speaker 1: There have been claims that these are the only native
Speaker 1: peoples who have survived into the nineteenth century without possessing
Speaker 1: the knowledge of fire creation and instead had to you know,
Speaker 1: quote unquote keep the fire burning, preserving lightning born embers,
Speaker 1: perhaps in hollowed out trees like so they had to
Speaker 1: keep it in the cage and not let it go out.
Speaker 1: According to these According to these allegations are that they
Speaker 1: have to we have to catch it. That's not the
Speaker 1: Promethean idea, like Prometheus gave it, gave us this fire,
Speaker 1: he didn't tell us how to make it, so store
Speaker 1: it somewhere nights, like in a hollowed out lock. This
Speaker 1: strikes me as one of those things that could easily
Speaker 1: be one of those sort of wrong racist colonial discussions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you know, to what extent there's also sort of
Speaker 1: a modern longing for like that primal existence, I think.
Speaker 1: But also they have the possibility for for racist attitudes
Speaker 1: of these You know, these savages clearly don't have the
Speaker 1: mastery of fire. They can only find it and then
Speaker 1: carry it around. Um, it would seem based on the
Speaker 1: research I was looking at, you could make a stronger
Speaker 1: case for the Sentinalese people. Uh, but it seems to
Speaker 1: remain an open question. It's it's worth noting that maintaining fire,
Speaker 1: carrying embers from one place to another, for instance, might
Speaker 1: not be such a weird thing to do in an
Speaker 1: extremely wet tropical environment that limits your access to dry,
Speaker 1: combustible materials, right, So like if you've always got fuel available, Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: well you might. Even if you knew how to start
Speaker 1: a fire, it might always be easier to just keep
Speaker 1: one burning. So what's the point? Yeah, I mean, if
Speaker 1: anyone is ever even if you've just stayed in a
Speaker 1: cabin and maintained a fire in the hearth to keep warm,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, it can be kind of a
Speaker 1: pain in the butt to see, even if you've got matches,
Speaker 1: Even if you've got matches and lighter fluid and all
Speaker 1: the rigamarole, sometimes it's easier just to keep some portion
Speaker 1: of a fire hot, keep the coals warm, uh, inactive
Speaker 1: long enough to reignite it later. That doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: don't know how to make fire, but sometimes it's the
Speaker 1: most expedient course. Well, now that I think about it,
Speaker 1: I know that's what I do. I mean, if I
Speaker 1: were out in the wilderness, I always try to keep
Speaker 1: something on fire instead of instead of wanting to have
Speaker 1: to restart it every time. Yeah, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: back on the voice out methods of you know, the
Speaker 1: flint and or using a little little bow method that
Speaker 1: I never could get to work, or using a crystal
Speaker 1: I gotta say, I think that bow method you're talking about,
Speaker 1: the one where you get the get the stick in
Speaker 1: the string, yes, and you roll it back and forth
Speaker 1: to create fire through friction with the wood on wood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's my My position is that that is a scam
Speaker 1: that nobody's ever actually done that. Uh, if you've seen
Speaker 1: video of it, I think it's it's made with Hollywood magic.
Speaker 1: I think I don't believe in it. Yeah, it's certainly
Speaker 1: it would seem like it would be easier to keep
Speaker 1: that the ambers going as opposed to doing that. But anyway,
Speaker 1: that's that's our that's our take on it. Anyway, maybe
Speaker 1: I'm just speaking out of bitterness from my childhood something
Speaker 1: I tried and failed at many times. So as long
Speaker 1: as we're talking about fire in the human brain, I
Speaker 1: also did want to throw in one thing that I
Speaker 1: thought was kind of interesting. It's just a metaphor. But
Speaker 1: so people are always trying to come up with physical
Speaker 1: metaphors to explain the nature of conscious us. You know,
Speaker 1: what is consciousness? It's like it's one of the big
Speaker 1: mysteries left out there. There are a lot of big mysteries,
Speaker 1: I guess in science, but consciousness is one of the
Speaker 1: thorniest of them because it's inherently subjective. You're essentially saying,
Speaker 1: what can be the explanation for the existence of subjectivity?
Speaker 1: Why aren't we all just automata with no experience? And
Speaker 1: so you've got these people who would say, well, we're
Speaker 1: we're panpsychists, right, and we believe that all matter is
Speaker 1: in some way conscious, at least in some really rudimentary way,
Speaker 1: that consciousness is an inherent property of objects. And then
Speaker 1: on the other hand, you've got like the physicist Max Tegmark,
Speaker 1: who has proposed that consciousness is a state of matter
Speaker 1: like solid or liquid or gas. You know, at some
Speaker 1: point matter arranges itself into some kind of information processing state,
Speaker 1: and this is like a new state of matter. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then some have also proposed that consciousness, though it's
Speaker 1: it's not that it's nonphysical, it's based on physical reality,
Speaker 1: is not a physical object or a physical quantity, but
Speaker 1: it's rather a process. It's more like consciousness is not
Speaker 1: the ball or the bat or the player, but the
Speaker 1: game of baseball being played. And uh. And another way
Speaker 1: to think about it in that sense would be that
Speaker 1: consciousness could be kind of like fire. Yeah, since that
Speaker 1: you know, fire isn't so much the substance, but it
Speaker 1: is the interaction of things happening to chemical reaction. What
Speaker 1: is consciousness but a slow motion explosion somedays more than others.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think that's a that's a valid point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the same sense that the gases and the oxygen
Speaker 1: and the fuel are not themselves fire, but they are
Speaker 1: reacting to create fire, to to create this thing that
Speaker 1: we call fire. Maybe all the you know, the cells
Speaker 1: in your brain are not consciousness, but that they generate this, uh,
Speaker 1: this combined property, this event we think of as consciousness,
Speaker 1: and that we experience his consciousness. Just a weird thing
Speaker 1: to think about. Well, on that note, Joe, I'd like
Speaker 1: to end this episode in the this this pair of
Speaker 1: episodes with a quote from one of one of my
Speaker 1: favorite books, and I know you appreciate this one as well,
Speaker 1: Coran McCarthy's The Road. It's also one of my favorite books. There.
Speaker 1: There's a common motif in the book, uh that when
Speaker 1: I first read it, I admit I didn't fully understand
Speaker 1: what was going on when they were talking, when the
Speaker 1: characters were talking about this, but they the main characters
Speaker 1: are a father, and a son. It takes place in
Speaker 1: a cold and dying world after the collapse of civilization
Speaker 1: and technology. But the father and the son often speak
Speaker 1: about carrying the fire. Indeed, so here's the quote, and
Speaker 1: I'll leave this for everyone to contemplate. You have to
Speaker 1: carry the fire. I don't know how to. Yes, you do.
Speaker 1: Is the fire real? The fire? Yes it is? Where
Speaker 1: is it? I don't know where it is. Yes, you do.
Speaker 1: It's inside you. It always was there. I can see
Speaker 1: it all right, everybody. If you would like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us, you can find us stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. You'll find the podcast episodes there,
Speaker 1: you'll find the blog posts, you'll find videos, and you'll
Speaker 1: find links out to various social media accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
Speaker 1: Tumbler and the like. And if you'd like to spread
Speaker 1: the fire to us, you can reach us by email
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com