The argument put forward for the role of cooking plant food in human evolution seems rather speculative. The connection between cooking vegetables and increased body size does have a certain logic to it, but how strong is the evidence for such cooking? "We strongly suspect hominids began using fire about 1.9 million years ago, when Homo erectus appeared," he added. He said colleagues working in Kenya have recently contacted his team and said they have evidence that humans were controlling fire that long ago. The most recent accepted evidence puts fire use at just 200,000 to 500,000 years ago." That is not exactly highly verified information! Some of the other claims are rather dubious. "Learning how to cook probably also allowed humans to develop their unique monogamous society, the researchers reported" -- This is a very strange claim, since many human cultures cook and also practice polygamy! "Modern humans share food, but apes don't," Laden said. "This is a transition between apelike behavior and humanlike behavior." This statement is not correct, though the "sharing" of meat by chimps is perhaps not "voluntary." (see: Stanford, C. Chimpanzee hunting behavior and human evolution, American Scientist, May/June 1995) Steve Meyers Staff Scientist Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Berkeley, CA E-mail: [log in to unmask]