Richard Wrangham: Did Cooking Make Us Human? (6/10/09)

Richard Wrangham, Professor of Biological Anthropology, Harvard University

Renowned primatologist Wrangham offers a startling new argument about how we came to be the social, intelligent and sexual species we are today. Our ancestors were apelike beings the size of chimpanzees until two million years ago, when homo erectus was born and we became human. What caused this extraordinary transformation? Wrangham argues that cooking created the human lineage. He will explain his bold theory.

This program was recorded in front of a live audience at the Commonwealth Club of California on June 10, 2009.