Did the invention of cooking initiate the development of patriarchal society?

That's what Harvard University anthropologist Richard Wrangham argues, among other things concerning evolution and cuisine, in his 2009 book, Catching Fire (Basic Books). Witty, comprehensive, and highly enlightenting, Wrangham's book discusses the theory that our departure from primitive beings and speedy evolution into hairless, upright, big-brained humans is all due to the invention and diffusion of cooking. Hell yeah, people who can cook are AWESOME. But this is a bit more sophisticated than that, of course. At times Wrangham is hard to follow, but his ultimate argument is: globally speaking, the development of our physiology, our character, and even our society, is because of cooking and eating cooked food.

Now, I haven't completed the book yet (relax! I'm getting there), but I recently finished "The Married Cook", the chapter that discusses the origins of male and female bonds based solely on food: the necessity, gathering, and cooking of it. Wrangham explains the symbiotic relationship between hunter (the male) and homemaker/cook (the female) and how their codependency began. Apparently, our cartoons of cavemen dragging women around by the hair aren't that innacurate. Okay, they are, but the author argues that male dependency on the female's ability to cook and provide for him ultimately led to the socio-cultural acceptance of men as the dominant sex.

Wrangham writes:

"The idea that cooking led to our pair-bonds suggests a worldwide irony. Cooking brought huge nutritional benefits. But for women, the adoption of cooking has also led to a major increase intheir vulnerability to male authority. Men were the greater beneficiaries. Cooking freed women's time and fed their children, but it also trapped women into a newly subservient role enforced by male-dominated culture. Cooking created and perpetuated a novel system of male cultural superiority. It is not a pretty picture." -chapter 7, page 177

It was a bit unexpected, since a good deal of the discussion is centered around, well, NOT modern human history. But his connection of this theory to our social custom is fasctinating. I bet Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who the author cited often in this chapter, would have a thing or two to say about that!