"For millions of years, we have survived as hunters. In the few short millennia since our divorce from that necessity, there has been no time for significant biological change - anatomical, physiological, or behavioral. Today, we have small hope of comprehending ourselves and our world unless we understand that man still, in his inmost being, remains a hunter."

From this premise, supported by the accumulated research and observations of two decades of anthropological investigation, Robert Ardrey guides the listener on a remarkable journey of discovery through 20 million years of man's prehistory: from the days when his ancestors first emerged from the forests of Africa during the benevolent warmth and rains of the Miocene, through the unremitting drought of the Pliocene and the dramatic climactic shifts of the Pleistocene, down to those few thousand years past when man emerged at last onto the stage of recorded history as a fully evolved hunting animal.

In this, Ardrey's fourth book on the subject of man's origins and nature, the author addresses himself with bold logic and insights to that basic question that haunts the cellars of our conscious mind: Why is man man?

Praise for the 1976 edition:

"This is easily the best of Robert Ardrey's books. It is brilliant in its summary of recent findings, it is wonderfully persuasive in its argument about our essential human nature, and it makes a satisfying unity out of Ardrey's thinking in all his books." - Max Lerner

"I believe that Robert Ardrey's books are the most important to be written since WWII...a unique and beautiful account of the making of man." - Antony Jay