We know that prehistoric humans made fire and shaped tools, but in this book Jonathan Kingdon argues that our ancestors shaped us - the human face, our racial differences and our problematic relationship with nature are all self-made. If all people belong to a single closely related family, how did we acquire our differences and why? This book supplies a radically new explanation. The author suggests that the price our tropical ancestors paid for their expansion out of an African Eden was an irreversible dependence on their own technology. It was in the process of developing man-made economies and developing to man-made habitats that humans diversified. The story of their travels and their travails is a magnificent adventure.