The Hunting Hypothesis: A Personal Conclusion Concerning the Evolutionary Nature of Man

London: Collins. Very Good/Good. 1976. Hard Cover. 8vo 0002163209 Dust jacket some loss to edges, price clipped. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. Previous owner's inscription on ffep. 243 pages clean and tight. 'For millions ofyears we 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 behavioural. 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 reader on a remarkable journey of discovery through twenty million years of Lian's prehistory: from the days when his ancestors first emerged from their arboreal home in the forests of Africa during the benevolent warmth and rains of the Miocene, through the unremitting drought of the Pliocene, through the dramatic climactic shifts of the Pleistocene, down to those few thousand years past when man emerged at last on to the stage of recorded history, a fully evolved hunting animal. Ardrey explores the crises man has met and overcome along the way - the depredations of larger predators, scant food supplies, prolonged drought, severe ice ages - and speculates on those characteristics of man that have enabled him not only to survive, but to thrive, to populate and ultimately to control even the most inhospitable corners of the globe. 'The Hunting Hypothesis is not so much a sequel to the three previous books as the culmination of them. He draws on twenty years of wide reading and deep thinking, of predictable objection and surprising corroboration, to produce a unique and beautiful account of the making of man.' ANTHONY JAY author of Corporation Man and Management and Machiavelli. .