Daniel Lieberman

At a glance

• Daniel Lieberman is an American palaeoanthropologist and evolutionary biologist. He is Edwin M. Lerner II Professor of Biological Sciences and professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University.
• With Dennis Bramble he published the hypothesis in Nature (2004) that endurance running played a role in human evolution. He later studied how barefoot runners strike the ground.
• His books The Story of the Human Body (2013) and Exercised (2020) explain how our bodies were shaped by an active hunter-gatherer life.
• In Exercised he debunks myths: that resting as much as possible is normal, that sitting is in itself as harmful as smoking, or that you need 10,000 steps.
• He also formulated the ‘active grandparent’ hypothesis: humans evolved to stay active as they age, and that activity helps maintain the body.
• For longevity, his work explains why physical activity has such a broad influence on ageing.
• Takeaway: make movement easy and social; a little is far better than nothing, and it still pays off later in life.