Book: The First Idea - How symbols, language and intelligence evolved from our primate ancestors to modern humans

By Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D. and Stuart G. Shanker, D.Phil. Published by Da Capo Press, 2004. From the back cover: In the childhood of every human being and at the dawn of human history there is an amazing and, until now, unexplained leap from simple, genetically programmed behaviour to the complexities of language, symbolic thinking, and culture.

 

The First Idea explores this missing link and offers brilliant new insights into two longstanding questions: How did human beings first create symbols, and how did these abilities evolve and get transmitted across generations over millions of years?

 

On Amazon here.