Skeptic: Promoting Science and Critical Thinking

Craig Stanford, co-director of the Jane Goodall Primate Research Center and Professor of Biological Anthropology at USC, asks: What makes us human? Tools? Language? Big brains? and offers the provocative theory that walking upright is the linchpin that made the human species possible. He explains how our ancestors’ shift to relying on two legs led to a cascade of changes that ultimately explain our humanity: walking and running improved our forebearers’ ability to find meat; meat eating played a key role in the development of intelligence and in processes such as childbirth; the change in posture associated with walking affected our lungs and gave rise to speech.