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In a series of four short films released on guardian.co.uk this week, Steven Pinker, Frans de Waal and Richard Wranghamdeal with human nature. Carole Jahme introduces the films and the sponsor whose values they epitomise, the Leakey Foundation

In 1968 â€" four years before he died â€" the infamous, maverick palaeoanthropologist Louis Seymour Bassett Leakey set up the L.S.B. Leakey Foundation. Her task, then, as now, was to study the origin and evolution of mankind, our behavior and our survival, as well as to promote public understanding of human evolution.

As Charles Darwin, Leakey was very creative and independent thinking. Indeed, during his life he was known as "Darwin history". In 1926 at the age of 23, Leakey left Cambridge University with the intent to prove that Africa, not Asia, was the cradle of mankind. The orthodox view of the time was that modern humans originated in Asia.

Leakey chose to dig for the fossilised remains of our ancestors in East Africa â€" in Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania. Today, he has been proved right many times over.

For the Leakeys, palaeoanthropology has always been a family affair, with Louis' wife Mary, their son Richard, his wife Meave, Louis' granddaughter Louise and other extended family members all world-class fossil hunters. Between them they have discovered Proconsul africanus, Austrolopithecus (Zinjanthropus) boisei, Homo habilis , the footprints of Australopithecus afarensis, Homo erectus\\ "Turkana Boy", Kenyanthropus platyops.

These are just a few of the significant fossils the Leakeys have presented to the world.

Apes in their natural habitat

Captive apes had been studied, but field primatology â€" where a researcher establishes a long-term field site with the intention of watching natural behaviour unfold â€" was unheard of before 1960. It is fair to say that without Leakey and his foundation the science of primatology as we know it today would not exist.

It was Leakey who, 50 years ago, sent Jane Goodall to Gombe, Tanzania, to study chimpanzees in their natural habitat. For the first few decades of Goodall's work the scientific community poured contempt on her research. But many years later, esteemed Harvard evolutionary biologist and historian of science Stephen J Gould would comment that, "Jane Goodall's work with the chimpanzees represents one of the Western world's great scientific achievements."

Leakey also had a "gorilla girl", the tragic Dian Fossey, who against the odds established the mountain gorilla study in Rwanda in 1967 (the work with gorillas is ongoing whenever the war-torn area is safe) and an "orang-utan girl", Biruté Galdikas. Thirty-nine years ago, before dispatching Galdikas to Borneo, Leakey had tried to persuade her to have a clitorectomy as a way of dissuading her from getting pregnant and disrupting his research plans. Galdikas declined the suggestion, and today â€" as a mother of three â€" she remains committed to orang-utan research and conservation in the face of devastating deforestation in Borneo. The foundation continues to support her work.

These comparative ape studies delighted Leakey as they yielded new and vital information, such as Goodall's observation that wild chimps made and used tools. At the time "man the toolmaker" was practically a scientific edict: humans were defined as having a greater intelligence than "the beasts" because we could make tools. Leakey had dug up tonnes of stone tools at Olduvai. But when it was realised that chimps also made tools Leakey declared: "Now we must redefine man, redefine tool or accept chimps as humans!"

This process of reassessment of our position in the natural order of things continues. With the support of the Research Foundation with Jill Pruetz 'in Senegal, where she observed in 2008 chimpanzees making and using copies to hunt animals for meat.

Puzzle of Human Evolution

In 1973 the Leakey Foundation also supported Don Johanson's expedition that unearthed the famous Australopithecus afarensis fossil, 3.2m year old "Lucy". The Foundation were also involved in the 1994 (announced in 2009) research that identified Ardipithecus ramidus, the "Ardi" fossil. More than a million years older than Lucy, Ardi was bipedal when on the ground but anthropoidal when in the trees. The fossil was discovered only 49 miles away from Lucy's final resting place.

Hardy and Lucy fossil to combine ancestral ancestral ape and human features and a very important part of the puzzle in the human evolution.

Since 1987 the Leakey Foundation has funded a Ugandan chimpanzee project led by Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham.

The work supported by the Leakey Foundation has consistently contributed to the closing of the "us and them" gap between man and the other apes. Continuing this enterprise, the Leakey Foundation sponsored a series of short films produced this year by The Department of Expansion, a US-based film company, and in return the Leakey Foundation, traditionally coy of publicity, is receiving some long-overdue media exposure.

The films present to the viewer contextualised evolutionary theory: the present global recession is covered, as is the threat of war. "What we're trying to do is take provocative ideas out of the ivory tower and into the public debate," producer Kristina Robbins told me.

For this discussion, she decided to incorporate the wisdom of three contentious scientists: movies Wrangham ; psychologist and author of The Blank Slate Steven Pinker; and primatologist Frans de Waal.

Challenging the boundaries of humanity

Last month I met up with de Waal and Robbins at the Wellcome Trust in London for de Waal's lecture, "Humans and other animals: challenging the boundaries of humanity". In his lecture de Waal reminded us of the ape ability (also seen in humans) spontaneously to give appropriate help to others in times of need. This pro-social, "targeted helping" form of altruism is only seen in species that are capable of self-reflection.

De Waal illustrated his point with an account of a playful juvenile chimp that had become entangled in wire. The panicking youngster was tightening the tourniquet around its neck and would surely die. A high-ranking male came to the rescue, lifted up the juvenile to stop the youngster from struggling and then carefully unravelled the wire, saving the youngster's life.

Behaviour such as this requires complex, empathic cognition and de Waal is now researching pro-social behaviour in elephants, dolphins and dogs. Previous studies suggest that these very diverse species are all wired for cooperative behaviour, which would mean that the origins of virtue are as ancient as the fossils Leakey unearthed.

At a little over seven minutes The Bi-polar Ape is the longest of the Department of Expansion films. Wrangham takes a bleak, misanthropic view, theorising that the behavioural default button in humans is one of aggression. As soon as resources become scarce a switch in our minds is flipped and people attack.

In a war where there is a sharp imbalance of forces, the attackers may actually enjoy the pain and devastation that they cause.

De Waal is more optimistic. A great admirer of the "make love not war" bonobo, he believes humans are "bi-polar apes". De Waal states that while we have something in common with the bonobo, who do not murder unknown individuals they come across but instead have sex with them, we also have xenophobic tendencies, like our murderous chimpanzee cousins.

Pinker, meanwhile, addresses the hard-wired cognition that drives both aggression and altruism in humans. He hedges his bets on whether humans are aggressors or hippy-peacemakers and instead reflects upon our human ability to "mind-read", suggesting that if we can empathise with our kin, perhaps we can extend that to non-kin, and if we can reflect on the devastating consequences of retaliation, perhaps we can consider conflict resolution.

And where there is cooperation there is hope, and where there is hope, there is peace. Bi-Polar Monkey deftly transforms the secret of the evolutionary theory of resonant ideas about the fragility of human existence.

The three other Department of Expansion films â€" which will be aired by the Guardian over the next three days â€" are shorter but equally thought-provoking. They deal with the human problems of overcrowding, inequality and superpowers.

In all these films comparisons are made between our ape relatives and ourselves. The underlying message is that once we have gained a better understanding of our evolved natures we can modify our behaviour for the better. So these films could be viewed as self-help aids: by learning about your evolved self you can override your basic instincts and consciously change your behaviour.

The Department of Expansion series of films are perfect, bite-sized lessons on our evolved, ape natures. Louis Seymour Bassett Leakey would have loved them.

Carole Jahme is the author of Beauty and the Beasts: Woman, Ape and Evolution. She writes the Ask Carole column for guardian.co.uk

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