Dimensions
127 x 197 x 20mm
This book provides an imaginative, carefully researched account of how the human mind evolved. It is a theory of mind: it tells us how our immediate ancestors might have thought and seen the world, in the absence of language, gods or culture. It relates that ancient heritage to our humanity, and examines the influence of our hominid past on our own behaviour, as creatures who speak, symbolise and create.
Central to the book is a fascinating meditation on the handaxe, crafted again and again for hundreds of thousands of years by our proto-human ancestors. In the reconstruction of the uses and meaning of the handaxe, we are taken into an alien world that is strangely close to our own.
This is a work of sociobiology, in that it applies Darwinism to human culture. It seeks to recapture Darwinism from the political right, and to show that a better understanding of our evolutionary history need not lead to an imposing of limits on who are and what we may become.
