How food fueled language, Part I

Human creativity and the coevolution of cooking and language

Bibliographic Data

ID12911679
AuthorsJake Young (0000-0001-7439-7395, Film Independent, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume15
Issue2
Pages187-211
Publication date2022-04-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTime and Mind (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1751-696X • E-ISSN: 1751-6978
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/1751696x.2022.2098811
OpenAlexW4286498496
LanguageEN
References cited69

Humans are unique in their creative abilities and this creativity likely arose as a result of self-domestication. Language use would have been a driver of early human self-domestication, and this paper examines how the controlled use of fire for cooking was an early driver in the development of language. Cooking allowed for greater caloric intake and a greater diversity of diet, contributing to larger hominin brain sizes and group sizes. These developments created new social constraints that were met by the emergence of language. Diets can impact neuroplasticity, enhancing divergent thinking and creativity. One potential source of such transformative foodstuffs were intoxicants, the use of which could have easily become ritualized and used as social and cognitive tools. Cooking and ritualization, as fundamentally hierarchically and temporally structured actions, are grounded in recursion, which is also a key aspect of language. Cooking, recursive, and symbolic thought coevolved, driving the development of language. This paper is part one of a two-part article

Biology · Coevolution · Creativity · Linguistics · Sociology · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology · Ecology