Re Nicola's article:- This is absurd. First, the anti-rawists promote Wrangham's ideas that cooking was started between 1.8 to 2.3 million years ago, and then, when these ideas are totally refuted due to lack of evidence, they come up with a figure of 150,000 years, instead. From what I've read, hearths came into being c.250,000 to 3000,000 yers ago, NOT 150,000 years ago, so any spurt in intelligence could NOT have been due to cooked-foods. Indeed, some anthropologists have claimed that the nearest spurt in civilisation/evolution was only 60,000 years ago when we invented traps, and subsequently bow and arrows.
*It's amusing how the anti-raw crowds are so desperate that they will invent new , much more recent, dates so as to back up their absurd arguments. When one looks at the evidence for 1.8 to 2.3 million years ago, a far more likely explanation for bigger brains emerges, namely consumption of raw meats/organ-meats.