Did stories make us human?

It’s been suggested that telling stories is what made us human. We devote a huge proportion of our lives to enjoying fictions.  Novels, film, television and before that travelling story-tellers.  Perhaps this has been so since the dawn of our species. Maybe what made our remote ancestors special was the ability to explore scenarios verbally, so that trial and error took place, so far as possible, around the campfire, not out on the perilous savannah.

I heard this on a podcast, which I hope I have saved somewhere, though for the life of me I can't lay my hands on it. I think it was the CBC (Canadian) programme Ideas, but I may be wrong. I badly need to listen to it again. The foregoing paragraph will be the opening to the preface of my putative book of childrens stories. I've just found out that there is a website called blurb.com where you can publish your own book. Hugely excited about this. Even if I can't sell my book, I'll be able to print it for Martha and Charlie and give a few copies away as presents. But I'll need to look lively, or Martha and Charlie will be too old!