Om this study of the evolution of the human mind, Marek Kohn relates our ancient heritage to our humanity, and examines the influence of our hominid past on our own behavior, as creatures who speak, symbolize, and create. Central to the book is a meditation on the handaxe, crafted again and again for hundreds of thousands of years by our proto-human ancestors. In his reconstruction of the uses and meaning of the handaxe, Kohn takes us 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. Unlike almost all works of "evolutionary psychology", however, 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 we are and what we may become.