Anthropologists had an intense interest in food long before our current societal obsession with all things edible.
The University of Arizona School of Anthropology, in its yearlong celebration of its 100th anniversary, has scheduled a symposium and a series of public events revolving around food this week.
On Thursday, Steven Raichlen, author of 28 books and host of the PBS television series “Primal Grill,” will talk on the history of grilling.
Raichlen, though not himself an anthropologist, has conducted serious study of the role of cooking in the history of humankind.
“It’s funny. I’m best known for my books on barbecue and 90 percent (of readers) are buying them for the recipes.
“The parts that interest me are the prose sections; in ‘Planet Barbecue,’ I cover 2 million years of barbecue history.”
Raichlen bases his 2-million-year estimate of grilling on the work of Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham, who argues that cooking food was a critical development in human evolution.
He proposes that Homo erectus, an early predecessor of Homo sapiens, was tossing meat on the fire that long ago.
“There is a deep, primal memory in all of us concerning barbecue,” Raichlen says, “because it was really at that moment that our human ancestors became human. It was the single, most important discovery in humankind.”
Raichlen said he maintains “a running debate” with his cousin, UA anthropologist David Raichlen, about those claims. “For Dave, upright walking and bipedal locomotion is what makes us human.”
David Raichlen said his cousin is on good theoretical ground with his claim for 2 million years of grilling, though the solid archaeological evidence for cooking by humans is about 500,000 years.
Steven Raichlen promised that his appearance won’t be overly academic.
“I’m not just going to lecture,” he said. “I’ll show you through a mouth-watering, 100-photograph presentation — a tour around the ‘Planet Barbecue.’”
