What makes humans the most successful animal species inhabiting the Earth today? Most scientists agree that the key to our success is the unusually large size of our brains. In this provocative book, Craig Stanford presents an intriguing alternative to this puzzling question -- an alternative grounded in recent, pathbreaking scientific observation. According to Stanford, what made humans unique was meat -- specifically, the hunting and sharing of meat. Based on new insights into the behavior of chimps and other great apes, our now extinct human ancestors, and existing hunting and gathering societies, Stanford shows the remarkable role that meat has played in these societies.