The DOI matches its Crossref record; 97 of the 97 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Human adaptation to the control of fire
Open accessAbstract
Charles Darwin attributed human evolutionary success to three traits. Our social habits and anatomy were important, he said, but the critical feature was our intelligence, because it led to so much else, including such traits as language, weapons, tools, boats, and the control of fire. Among these, he opined, the control of fire was “probably the greatest ever [discovery] made by man, excepting language.” Despite this early suggestion that the control of fire was even more important than tool use for human success, recent anthropologists have made only sporadic efforts to assess its evolutionary significance. Here we use recent developments in understanding the role of cooked food in human diets to support the spirit of Darwin's offhand remark. We first consider the role of fire in increasing the net caloric value of cooked foods compared to raw foods, and hence in accounting for the unique pattern of human digestion. We then review the compelling evidence that humans are biologically adapted to diets that include cooked food, and that humans have a long evolutionary history of an obligate dependence on fire. Accordingly, we end by considering the influence of fire on various aspects of human biology. We pay particular attention to life history, and also briefly discuss effects on anatomy, behavior, and cognition.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The descent of man and selection in relation to sex
(1907) · The Journal of the Anthropological Society of Tokyo · doi:10.1537/ase1887.22.495 · Cited by 10,892
Pleiotropy, natural selection, and the evolution of senescence.
Williams, G. C. (1957) · Evolution · doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.1957.tb02911.x · Cited by 4,279
The structure of evolutionary theory
(2002) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.39-6411 · Cited by 2,756
The Structure of Evolutionary Theory
GOULD, S. J. (2002) · Harvard University Press eBooks · doi:10.2307/j.ctvjsf433 · Cited by 2,530
The expensive-tissue hypothesis: The brain and the digestive system in human and primate evolution
Aiello, L. C., & Wheeler, P. (1995) · Current Anthropology · doi:10.1086/204350 · Cited by 2,291
Optimal Foraging Theory: A Critical Review
Pyke, G. H. (1984) · Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics · doi:10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.15.1.523 · Cited by 2,210
Pleiotropy, natural selection, and the evolution of senescence
Williams, G. C. (1957) · Evolution · doi:10.2307/2406060 · Cited by 1,912
AN UNSOLVED PROBLEM OF BIOLOGY
(1953) · Medical Journal of Australia · doi:10.5694/j.1326-5377.1953.tb84985.x · Cited by 1,805
Endurance running and the evolution of Homo
Bramble, D. M., & Lieberman, D. E. (2004) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature03052 · Cited by 1,743
Convergent adaptation of human lactase persistence in Africa and Europe
Tishkoff, S. A., Reed, F. A., Ranciaro, A., Voight, B. F., Babbitt, C. C., Silverman, J. S., Powell, K., Mortensen, H. M., Hirbo, J. B., Osman, M., et al. (2007) · Nature Genetics · doi:10.1038/ng1946 · Cited by 1,615
Cited by
Richerson, P., Baldini, R., Bell, A. V., Demps, K., Frost, K., Hillis, V., Mathew, S., Newton, E. K., Naar, N., Newson, L., et al. (2016) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x1400106x · Cited by 639
Embers of society: Firelight talk among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen
Wiessner, P. W. (2014) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1404212111 · Cited by 485
Humans and Scavengers: The Evolution of Interactions and Ecosystem Services
Moleón, M., Sánchez-Zapata, J. A., Margalida, A., Carrete, M., Owen-Smith, N., & Donázar, J. A. (2014) · BioScience · doi:10.1093/biosci/biu034 · Cited by 257
Scherjon, F., Bakels, C., MacDonald, K., & Roebroeks, W. (2015) · Current Anthropology · doi:10.1086/681561 · Cited by 107
Zoon politikon: The evolutionary origins of human socio-political systems
Gintis, H., van Schaik, C., & Boehm, C. (2019) · Behavioural Processes · doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2018.01.007 · Cited by 53
Metadata
- Authors
- Wrangham, R., & Carmody, R.
- Venue
- Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2010-09
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 187-199
- ISSN
- 1060-1538 (ISSN-L)
- 1520-6505
- OpenAlex
- W2013729447
- Cited by
- 274
- References
- 97
- FWCI
- 42.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Human adaptation to the control of fire. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1002/evan.20275
- The paper
- Wrangham, R., & Carmody, R. (2010). Human adaptation to the control of fire. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.20275
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
