[MUSIC] In the previous segment, we saw

that humankind, for most of its

existence, had large brains.
Had the ability to produce and use tools,
had complex social structures, but
remained week and marginal in the
ecosystem.
Eventually, however, human beings, at
least in the last 100,000 years, ascended
to the top of the food chain and became
the most powerful animals around.
How did they make this, this, this junk?
Perhaps the first significant step on the
way to the top was the domestication of
fire.
We don't know exactly when were and how
humans did this, to domesticate fire.
But we do know from archaeological
evidence that by about 300,000 years ago
some humans, like neanderthals and later
homo sapiens, were using fire on a daily
basis.
Fire had important advantages to offer
humans.
It gave humans a source of light in
darkness.
And a source of warmth in winter when
it's cold.
Fire also gave our ancestors the first
really effective weapon against dangerous
animals, like lions and bears.
A fire could also be used to start
changing the environment.
To fit our eh, not our but our ancestor's
needs, the needs of humans hundreds of
thousands of years ago.
People, for example, could use fire to
burn down forests, and once the forest
and once the flames die down then humans
could walk in and collect all kinds of
dead animals that were cooked in the fire
and eat them, so it was an easy meal.
You just burn down the forest and you
come and collect a lot of food, which you
can now eat.
So this was another important advantage
of fire, but the most important thing
that fire did, the best thing about fire
was that it enabled humans to cook.
We don't often think about cooking as eh,
one of the big steps forward in the
history of humankind, but cooking was of
immense importance.
First of all, cooking opened entire new
sections in the supermarket of Nature
before humankind.
I mean that, all kinds of foods that
exist in nature, but that humans cannot,
cannot digest, cannot eat without cooking
them, such as, wheat, and rice, and

potatoes.
Once fire eh, once humans had control of
fire, they could start eating these
foods.
You cannot go around an just pick, say a
wheat and eat it, because you can't
digest wheat in it's natural form.
And similarly you cannot dig potatoes in
the ground and just eat them.
A cow can do it, a pig can do it, because
they have a digestive system that can
digest wheat, and potatoes, and rice.
But humans can't.
Until they had fire eh, eh, eh, to do
much of the job for them, once you cook
potatoes, or once you bake wheat, you can
eat it and enjoy the, the, the calories
and the vitamins that they can give you.
So this was a, a big advantage of fire.
People could start eating many new
things.
Another advantage was that cooking kills
germs and parasites that infest food
especially in meat, but also in other
kinds of food.
So once humans begin to cook their
food,uh it protected them against all
kinds of health dangers.
And against all kinds of parasites.
That otherwise may enter the body, and
live there, and kill them.
Another big advantage of fire, sorry, of
cooking, is that it reduced, it reduced
the time that humans have to invest in
chewing their food, and the time and
energy needed to digest food.
Food, when it comes raw, uncooked, you
have to chew it for a long time, and then
it takes the stomach and the guts a long
time, and, and a lot of energy, to digest
them properly.
Our cousins, the chimpanzees, they spend
an average of five hours each day just
chewing and chewing food in order to make
it easier for, for, for the stomach.
For people who use fire in order to cook
their food, one hour a day is sufficient
and they need to expend much less energy
eh, eh, eh, to digest the food.
So basically, what fire, what cooking
enables people to do, is to outsource
much of the digestion to, to fire.
We don't have to do it ourselves, much of
our digestion is ate, actually done by
fire.
This means that humans in contrast for
example, to chimpanzees, they can survive
with smaller teeth, with less powerful
jaws and with shorter intestines.
When you eat cooked food, you don't need

very big teeth, and very powerful jaws,

and very long intestines because you
don't need to invest much effort in
chewing and digesting.
Actually the old scholars believe that
there is a direct link between the
beginning of cooking, the shortening of
the human intestines, and the growth of
the human brain.
And why do they claim this?
Well.
One of the interesting things about the
energy economy of the body, of the human
body is that the two greatest, greatest
consumers of energy in the body are the
brain and the digestive system.
The stomach and the intestines.
This is why it's quite difficult to have
both very long intestines and a large
brain at the same time, because they
compete for the limited energy of the
body.
Once you shorten the intestines, you
don't need so much intestines to digest
your food.
You can now open the way for a really a
big brain.
And there is evidence that the big jump
eh, we discussed earlier is the growth of
the human brain and we said that it
bigger every two and a half millions
years ago but.
The really big jump, in the size of human
brains, came only in the last 300 or
four, 400,000 years, with the appearance
of species like the neanderthals and homo
sapiens, with giant brains.
And this is exactly the time, that people
began to cook.
So some scholars say that there is a
direct link, that once you cooked your
food, your intestines became shorter and
then your brain really got big.
So, this is a very big advantage, that
fire and cooking gave to humans.
And this is why again, many scholars,
many scientists say that the first really
significant gulf between men and all the
other animals was the domestication of
fire.
The power of almost of the other animals
in nature, depend upon their body.
There is a direct link between what kind
of the false, the power of your body and
the power of the animal.
The power of the animal depends on the
strength of the muscles, on the size of
the teeth, and on the breadth of the
wings in case of birds eh, so there is a
link here, between the body and the power

of the animal.
Now it is true, that some animals can use
natural forces to increase the power.
For instance animals can harness the
power of water currents, or the power of
winds, but even when animals do that
there is still a very close connection to
the abilities, to the physical abilities
of their bodies.
Eagles, for example, they can use.
The power relies not only directly on
their bodies, but also on identifying
winds, and thermal columns, columns of
hot air, that eagles use in order to to
fly.
Eagles are able to identify a place where
there are currents of hot air coming up,
and then they spread their wings, and
their allow the hot air to carry them
upwards.
But, eagles can not decide, they can not
control, the location of these hot air
columns, and even when they use the wings
and the hot air.
The maximum carrying capacity, the
maximum power is still proportional to
their wingspan.
Even if an eagle locate a very, very
powerful column of hot air, it's not
enough to be able to lift a, an elephant
because the eag, the, the eagle's eh, eh,
wingspan is simply not big enough.
So this is what I meant when I said that
the power of animals is always directly
dependent on the power of their bodies.
And the size and shape of their bodies.
When humans domesticated fire, it broke
the link between the power of the animal
and the size and power of the body of the
animal.
Because when humans domesticated fire,
they gained control of an obedient force,
and also a very potentially limitless
force, a force without limits.
Unlike eagles, humans can choose when and
where to ignite a fire.
It's up to them, to decide it.
More importantly, the power of fire is
not limited by the power of the body of
the human who ignited it.
Or by the form, or by the strength of the
muscles, or anything like that.
A single woman, which carries a torch, or
a flint, can burn down an entire forest
in a matter of hours.
An entire forest with thousands of trees,
and thousands of animals and birds and so
forth, she can burn it down by herself.
It's not like the eagle, that even when
it can use the wind, it is still limited

by the size of the wings.

In the case of a woman burning down an
entire forest, there is absolutely no eh,
proportion between the power of her body
and her power as a master of fire that
can burn down the whole forest.
So, the domestication of fire, in this
respect, was a sign of things to come.
The domestication of fire was, in a way,
the first important step on the way eh,
to the atomic bomb.
And fire made humans more different from
all the other animals, and more powerful.
However, it should be emphasized, that
even after the domestication of fire,
humans were still not the most important
animal In the world.
They were still not the most powerful
animal in the world.
Eh, this the, the real jump to the top of
the food chain had to wait a few hundred
thousand years more to the appearance and
the spread and the triumphs of our
species, Homo Sapiens.
And this eh, this, the eh, appearance and
spread, of our species of Homo Sapiens,
will be eh, the subject of the next
segment.