YouSaid · the spoken record

Richard Wrangham

lines on the record: 156
first: 2021-10-10
most recent: 2021-10-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I don't think I'm afraid of it. I'm reconciled to the fact it's going to happen. I just feel frustrated because I enjoy life and I don't want to leave the party.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, I mean, if we can become like sequoias and live for hundreds of years and thousands of years, that would be great.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that's got nothing to do with peace versus war. I mean, you have animals that are very, very peaceful, but they evolve just in the same way as other animals do. They just don't do it with death caused by violence. And violent death is premature death, surely. I mean, I don't mind about people dying. What I mind about is people dying in their youth, Middle Ages.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now that we know how many planets have the right sort of conditions, which is what I can't remember a lot, it's some significant percentage of all planets, then there are apparently billions of planets. And things happen so quickly on Earth. Once you've got water, then you got life. It did not take long for life to evolve in the big scheme of things.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's very clear that we have an evolutionary story that is only getting challenged around the edges. We have a very clear understanding of the evolution of life. And the meaning is we are here as a consequence of materialistic processes. Began in our sense with the establishment of the earth four and a half billion years ago, whatever it was, and then water and oxygen and so on. And we are the astonishing consequence of the evolution of cells and multicellular organisms. The word random is the wrong word to use unless you understand what it means. It didn't happen by chance, but a lot of random events had to happen to make this possible. And those random events, of course, are the production of appropriate mutations. But the meaning of life is... There is no meaning. The really big mystery of life is why is there a universe?”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, unfortunately, the problems are incredibly difficult to solve and there is no one solver. It has to happen from a network of potentially cooperating people. But I mean, you're so right about it being daunting to think about what it looks like from space. And I love the view that Herman M ⁇ ller expressed of being able to go out from space. And he said, the whole of life would look like a kind of rust on the planet.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But we should be spending billions on this earth in order to make sure that we have I don't know how to say it, you know, substantial, representative, populations. Are these close relatives?”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are so incredibly lucky to have chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas as our close relatives still living on the earth. We're unlucky that we don't have astridethenes and other species of Homo, but we're still lucky to have those because they are incredibly closely related to us compared to what most animals have. You know, there are many animals that don't have any close relatives to them on the Earth. But not only are they relatively close, but they teach us so much about ourselves. The similarities between them and ourselves raise questions that we can then test about the extent to which our own behavioral propensities are derived from the same evolutionary stock as in those great apes. Well, how much is that worth? You know, I mean, we could spend billions going to the Mars to find evidence of bacteria there, and that's fascinating too.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What is required is for people in the rich countries to do much more investment than they have so far in maintaining both the natural places in their own countries and in the tropics. And if you look at Africa, you know, I mean, the population trends are that Nigeria may become the most populous country in the world, I think, within a century. The future of African habitats, you know, it's clear what's going to happen in general. There's going to be a huge conversion towards agricultural land. I heard Ed Wilson speak years ago about the prospect of the entire globe being turned into a single human feedlot. Going to take a lot to avoid that. He is out there calling for half the earth to be devoted to nature. It's incredibly ambitious and incredibly optimistic. But unless you have really exciting goals, probably nothing will be achieved.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In other places Keep nature there because it's useful for maintaining the climate, bringing rain. Maybe you can in some places. Convince people of the sheer sort of. Aesthetics of keeping nature that Even over the long term, presidents whose job it is to look for the future of the country will be persuaded that you can do it for purely aesthetic reasons. But overall...”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think the only way in which we can really conserve is if we put tremendous effort into conserving the very best representative areas of nature. Often this would be the national parks that already exist. And what we have to do is to make them so valuable that actually it is worth it in terms of human survival to be able to keep those sorts of places That's the attitude that my colleagues and I have taken in Uganda where we want to keep the Kibali National Park alive, which has got the largest population in chimpanzees in Uganda, and it's got elephants and wonderful birds and wonderful butterflies and wonderful plants and so on and visitors and lots and lots of visitors. It may be that we're going to have to have huge increases in the amount of charges that you pay for ecotourism and you need to make sure ecotourism is done right.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a Very difficult question because every time there is a conflict between conservation of a natural habitat and allowing people to get that little bit of extra food for their babies, then naturally the tendency is for the humans to win. So we have this steady erosion in the face of tremendous efforts to conserve nature. We have a continuing steady erosion of habitats and all the species. And the numbers are always in the wrong direction. Occasionally you get sort of wonderful little examples of something being saved, but the overall trend is clear. It's very difficult to see how one can ever escape that because it's not human now that we are essentially a single tribe. Want to save an elephant if it means killing 20 humans.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“which swell to particularly large size compared to the female chimpanzees and the females have a lot of interactions with each other in which they excitedly rub their clitorises together and Pierre have orgasms. Wow. These occur in the context of Some kind of social tension. And they sometimes happen before, they sometimes happen after the social tension, and they seem to be devices, these interactions for ensuring that everyone's friends and reducing the chances that they're actually going to get into a fight.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They are less aggressive, and they show all the marks of domestication that domesticated animals do compared to wild animals in their bones. So they have reduced differences between males and females, in which the males are more like females. They have smaller brains, they have shorter faces, smaller teeth, and smaller bodies. All the things that domesticated animals show. And bonobos live in this environment in a strikingly peaceful way compared to the chimpanzees. There's no indication that they will have these aggressive kills and enough data now to show that there's a statistical difference in the frequency with which it would happen. And Bonobo is a famously erotic. The females have enlarged sexual parts.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in other words, you know, they're a very sort of simple little strategy. Just shows the courtesy with which they can treat each other. And the days I love with Jim, so when you see that sort of thing, or when you see mothers just lying on a sunlit patch in the forest with babies bouncing on top of them, just having a wonderful, peaceful time. And that's what most of their lives are like. So, chimpanzees are the species that kind of unites the rest of the apes because a gorilla is in many ways just a big version of a chimpanzee. If you can sort of engineer a chimpanzee in your mind to be bigger, it basically turns into a gorilla. And then bonobos on the left bank of the Congo River are like a domesticated form of chimpanzee but obviously humans didn't domesticate them so they're self-domesticated.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hugh doesn't do anything. He just finishes his mouthful, and then he turns to Charlie and grooms him. So this very polite way of saying, Will you groom me, please, has worked. Then, said Hugh grooms around Charlie's back and around to the right side and then down his arm to what point where he can reach the branch again. And then he picks up the branch and continues. Now.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this is Hugh and Charlie. And we think they were probably brothers. They never actually got the genetic evidence to prove it. Well, I never remember now who it is, but let's say that they both come down from the tree and they're both carrying branches of the food, they're eating actually seeds from these branches. They're both engaged even in the midday sun when they want to come down and Unshade themselves for a bit on the ground, they're still eating. But then Charlie. And he starts grooming Hugh. And Hugh continues eating from his branch. Charlie eventually gets bored with this after a few minutes, and he reaches out and he lifts the branch from which Hugh is still taking seeds. And puts it over his head and puts it behind his back as far as possible away from Hugh.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To mate with every single male in the group multiple times, as if to give a memory in that male of yeah, yeah, I reminded you, so I'm not going to be mean to your baby. So, what's wonderful about chimps? Well, you know, as we've spoken about them, they are creative and amazingly human-like. But I love the sort of quiet moments. And here's one. I've got two chimps who are grooming each other on a day when they are utterly exhausted. They've walked 11 kilometers the day before, up and down hills. And on this particular day, all they do is they get to one tree and they eat from that tree. And other than that, they only walk about 100 yards and they go back to sleep in the nest in which they woke up. So they're utterly exhausted and they're just eating nonstop because they're trying to recover their energy.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, the chimps that remained in the forest throughout this time and occupied all the countries across from West to East Africa now, again, we assume that they're pretty similar to the ones that live nowadays, where there's some variation from west to east. And these are animals that live in social communities of between, say, 20 and 200. You can have a lot of them in one group, but they never come together in a single unit. They share an area, a community territory, and that area is defended by males. And within it, females wander and bring up their young independently. And the females are very scared about the possibility that males will be mean to their infants. And in order to avoid them doing that, they do their best.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So then the next thing that happened on the evolutionary tree was six or seven million years ago when you have the line between Chimpson Bonobos on the one hand and humans on the other splitting. And basically what happened is that at that point a chimp-like ancestor leaves the forest. Gets isolated in an area outside the forest and adapts, and that becomes the astrolophythines. And meanwhile, the chimpanzees and bonobo ancestor continues in the forest And later, what happens is that one branch of that crosses the Congo River and becomes the bonobos. That was only about two million years ago, maybe one million years ago.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's all. No, no, there's nothing wrong with it for that. I don't know. I never thought of that. You never know. It's possible.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I see. Well, that's a fun idea. I don't see why she should be using me, but you mean testing how strongly they're prepared to intervene to.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I love the way that that was a very deliberate response. And I love the way that Simba had been so interested in me and held my eye. Chimps and Brenoba never hold your eye, but gorillas really look as though they're trying to sort of figure out what are you thinking about? That was a species that goes back for something like 10 million years.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had the privilege of spending a week or two with guerrillas at Diane Fosse's camp before she was murdered. And I went out with two women, Kelly and Barb, to a particular group. There was a young female in the group called Simba. And Simba approached us and stared at the two women and then she came towards me and she very deliberately reached out her knuckles and touched me on the forehead. She was watched in doing this by a young male who was quite keen on her. And he was called digit. And about five minutes later, Digit stood in front of us on the path. And Kelly was in front of me. And then there was Bob, and then there was me. And he came charging down the path and he sidestepped around Kelly and he sidestepped around Bob. And me, he just knocked with his arm and sent me flying about five yards into the bushes.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Gorillas represent the oldest chain, so about ten million years ago, maybe as recently as eight million years ago, the ancestor of gorillas broke off from the ancestor leading to chimps and bonobos and humans. So they've probably remained very similar now to what very similar to what they were then. They were probably the largest apes living in montane areas and spending more time eating just herbs, stems, not so vitally dependent on fruit. And living in, if there was like the present, groups up to about 50 stable groups with one alpha male who was in charge. Gorillas are wonderfully. Slow and inquisitive compared to chimps and bonobos.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In Africa Stradling the equator. There is a strip of rainforest that relies on the combination of high temperatures and rainfall that you get around the equator That rainforest goes into but twenty two countries. Throughout those countries, you have chimpanzees, although they've gone extinct in two of them. In just a fraction of them, but it was five countries, you've got Where there are mountains, and in one country, on the left bank of the Great Congo River, you have bonobos. So in the African forest, you've got these three African apes, the only African apes. all of which are very similar in much of their way of life. They walk on their knuckles through the forest looking for fruit trees and eating herbs when they can't find fruits.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, we haven't spoken about sexual selection, but that is a really important part of it. To outcompete each other in normally without any physical conflict just in order to be able to be chosen by mates of the opposite sex. And that is certainly a major source of creativity.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These platforms that are put there, the platform of increasing brain size and therefore cognitive ability made possible by increased energy supply. The platform of cooperation and tolerance in a world in which there remains a lot of conflict and therefore a need to respond to the conflict and manipulate your allies appropriately. Know, I don't see beauty as coming either kind of beauty as coming sort of totally independently of these things. You know, I don't think there's a selection for staring into the sunset and creating poetry. But I guess sexual selection, you know, males wanting to impress females in different ways will lead to them wanting to.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There has been selection in favor of bigger brains, which probably in general has been associated with increasing cognitive ability. And as that has happened, the complexity of life has increased because people have more and more complex, highly differentiated strategies in response to each other's more complex, highly differentiated strategies. We get to a point where there is deception and self-deception, there is a manipulation of ideas through stories that we invent and stories that we pass on. I guess all I'm wanting to say is that There is a world of the mind that Evolves in response.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If the beauty of the human mind is the ability of us all to be creative, to explore. One kind of beauty. Another kind of beauty is the empathy that we can show. And we think of that as beautiful because it is a kind of rare and special ability compared to the sort of ordinary selfishness that can commonly predominate. I suppose we'd have to think of different sources for those two types. I suppose, you know, a general answer is that”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, yes. I mean, once you have sufficient language to be able to have the beta males conspiring to kill the alpha male, then you have selection in favor of cooperation and tolerance, as we spoke about. And at that point, there will be increased ability to communicate and the language will get richer and better and better. So yes, absolutely. Positive feedback loop once you get the situation started”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some of them might be harbouring deep feelings of resentment. How does anyone else know that? So, in other words, I think that you have to have some kind of language that is pretty good to solve the problems of gaining confidence that Five of you say, you know, or some number can trust each other in this final attack Even nowadays it's difficult”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yes, the only thing I would modify on that is that you have to ask, how is it that the beta males were able to kill the alpha male? And we now know that although chimpanzees do kill males within their own group sometimes, it's not a process of killing the alpha male. It's taking advantage of opportunity when some male gets into a bad position, but it's not a systematic ability to kill the alpha male. And you can see why, because they don't have language. And without language, it's very difficult to know how confident you can be of the support of others against a particular individual within your own group. When you're attacking someone from another group, that problem is solved. We all hate the... Those guys. The Alpha Male has got alliances within his group. Some of the allies might be willing to turn against him.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So once they're cooking, that problem is solved, and they can eat the meat such as much more readily. So I think that meat eating would become for two reasons with cooking.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And while he's there, drops of blood or little scraps fall down to the bottom and the junior members of society, you know, the females and young and that sort of thing, they are racing through to find a particular leaf that's got a drop of blood on it so they can lick it. I mean, they love it. Takes them a lot of time to chew it. I mean, it's the same thing as for cooked food in general. So they are getting meats very slowly into their bodies. And there sometimes comes a time when they just say, I've had enough of this. I need real food and they'll drop the meat and go off and eat fruit again because they can get fruit into their bodies so much faster than they can get meat.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The other thing is that the meat is so much nicer. So, when a chimpanzee kills a monkey, and I mean, they are so excited about killing a monkey. They are so excited about going into the hunt and when they make the kill, then the screams everywhere and some try to seize it and capture it and take it away from the others and eventually the strongest one has it and the others sit around begging and trying to get some and tear it off. And so they all love it. There are others who he often goes to the top of a tree in order to be able to get away from all of these beggars and scavengers”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Saving yourself time, you can free up. The opportunity to go and hunt more. Because hunting is a high-risk, high gain activity. There's every risk that you will get nothing on one particular afternoon that you go off looking for opportunities to kill It's high gain because when you do get something, you bring down a kudoo, then you've got a serious amount of meat. What did males and females do with the time they were saving from not having to chew their food? I think that in the case of males, it's very reasonable to think they spent a greatly increased amount of time hunting So, chimpanzees hunt maybe two or three times a month, and the average hunt length is 20 minutes. Humans hunting maybe 20 times a month and the average hunt length is six hours. So it's a huge difference.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that Fire increased the using of meat. But the fact that chimpanzees really like to hunt and kill meat, as do bonobos, certainly puts us in, so those two species have a common ancestor with us going, Six, seven million years ago, and it was from that common ancestor that you get the Australopithe in line. It's very likely, therefore, astrolopithecines were eating meat when they could get it. which wouldn't be very often because they wouldn't be very good sprinters but nevertheless they would occasionally be able to get some meat and I bet they loved it all the time and basically all primates like meat if they can get it almost all of them But I think fire would have been very important for a couple of reasons. One is that once you eat fire, once you eat your food cooked, then you're saving yourself time.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that's the same with domesticated animals compared to their wild ancestors, and probably, therefore, with Homo sapiens, say 30,000 years ago compared to their ancestors. So we have smaller brains than Neanderthals.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. So I think what we're seeing in humans is that same manifestation and then the fascinating question is why. And the only point I would want to make about this is that there is no evidence that in the small brain domesticas, they're losing, say, an average about 15% of brain size. In the small brain domesticas compared to their wild ancestors, there's no indication of a loss of cognitive ability. So I think what's going on is that it's a younger brain, it's a more pedomorphic brain looking like the juveniles of the ancestor. But just as our kids are very smart and can learn amazing things compared to adults, all they lack is wisdom and maturity, but in terms of sheer cognitive ability, they got it.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, with homo sapiens, you've got a smaller brain from, people haven't got it exactly down, but at least 30,000 years ago, it starts declining. And so the fascinating thing about that is that all domesticated animals have smaller brains than their wild ancestors.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, all of a sudden, you've got hours a day in which to do other things, to use those brains that you've now enabled to grow. So with homo erectus, you start the process of getting a bigger brain and famously, throughout the whole period of the evolution of the genus Homo, you have a steadily increasing size of brain. Until right at the end when it actually gets smaller, but that's a different story.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, how does a gorilla get a bigger brain? It doesn't. It's actually got a smaller brain relative to its body size than a chimpanzee does. And that's the basic problem for our ancestors. Then you come along and cook on all of a sudden you can get an increased amount of energy from your food. You are spending much less energy on digesting your food. 25 bodily processes or more that are involved in digesting your food. Making the acid that takes the protein. Maintaining the brush border where the molecules are taken across the gut wall and so on. At all costs it costs you to digest your food, it costs less if you cook your food. So you get a net gain in the amount of energy. And you are reducing the amount of time from, in our case, our ancestors, probably around 50% of the day chewing nowadays one hour a day chewing.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For pretty much the entire day, in the sense that they are eating for maybe seven or eight hours a day in some seasons, that's just chewing. And then they've got to sit around and digest their food because they can't just eat all the time. They've got to take a break while the food is. Digested in the stomach and then passed into the gut, so the stomach is already full. Basically, gorillas are eating about the maximum rate already.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what's different about their brain is that, in addition to us being able to fuel it in a way that other animals can't, we also have reasons for wanting to have an even bigger brain. Whereas we don't want an even bigger heart. So, what those reasons are unclear. But with regard to the costs of maintaining a brain, cooking makes it possible because it's supplying more calories and it is enormously reducing the amount of time that it takes to chew your food. So if you were a gorilla, You wanted to have a bigger brain, you might say, okay, well, let's just eat some more. Gorillas are eating”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I think that the control of fire has been ultimately responsible for essentially How grandiose do I want to be here? You know, the entire human story going back to Homo, it is what changed us from being a regular kind of animal. And perhaps the biggest way in which it is likely to have changed us is it reduced The difficulty of making a large brain. So the story here is that the constraints on brain size are energetic. You and I have brains that are something like 2.5% of our body weight. It consumes around 25% of all of our calories. So it's disproportionate. There are other expensive organs in our body as well, such as the heart.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You took the words out of my mouth. I mean, if they have fire at all Their food rolls into it five minutes later it tastes better than it did before.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think what it is that animals are always looking for any kind of way to get food that is easier to digest. And there are various signals in the food, such as the amount of sugar there, the amount of free amino acids because the amino acids can be tasted. And the physical qualities of the food be particularly important, how tough the food is. Always prefer softer food provided it feels safe. Taste safe. And these kinds of sensory cues are all there in cooked food. It's soft. It doesn't have so many toxins. It's not so noxious to taste. Easier to chew. So everyone loves it spontaneously. Your dogs and your cats prefer cooked food or raw food. Well, maybe you can say that's a consequence of domestication. But even, you know, as I say, all of the great apes. You test naive ones, and they prefer it cooked if they can.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, here's what we know we know that all the animals that we've tested like to eat their food cooked more than they like it raw. So, this is true for all the great apes. We've tested them. That's fantastic.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At no time between two million years ago and the present do we see any changes in our anatomy that can, as it were, justify the enormous change that happens when you are an animal that learns to control fire. But at two million years ago, we have exactly what you'd expect. namely the guts becoming smaller because the food is becoming softer and much more easy to digest so you don't have to work so hard in your body to digest it and as I say a commitment to sleeping on the ground I think you'd be absolutely crazy to do nowadays on a moonless night in the middle of Serengeti unless you had fire. I've slept out quite a lot in various parts of Africa in the bush, and you will not catch me just lying on the ground in an area with lots of predators unless I got a fire with me.”
2021-10-10 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #229 – Richard Wrangham: Role of Violence, Sex, and Fire in Human Evolution · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source