The Thinking Meat Project

The making of humanity

Several perennially fascinating questions arise in the study of humankind: What makes us so different from other animals? Was there some turning point or specific development that marks the emergence of uniquely human behavior? In other words, how did we become human? A recent workshop at Arizona State University, “Origins of Human Uniqueness and Behavioral Modernity,” addressed these questions. This article from Scientific American describes the conference, briefly describing how three core abilities (cognition, culture, and cooperation) together shaped the emergence of the human.