Frontmatter -- Preface -- Contents -- Introduction. Medawar leaps -- Chapter 1 Story-telling, Lane's story, and epigenetic inheritance -- Chapter 2 Language and conceptual integration -- Chapter 3 Homo as a container, life in the Great Rift Valley and human bonding -- Chapter 4 The brain, the larynx and mirror neuron systems -- Chapter 5 Homo habilis and the beginning of symbolic communication -- Chapter 6 The dispersal of Homo erectus: The "muddle in the middle" -- Chapter 7 Building a language: From concepts and functions to constructions without rules -- Chapter 8 Language, fire and symbolic containers of ritual -- Chapter 9 The linguistic worlds of H. heidelbergensis: language and "Theory of Mind" -- Chapter 10 The counterfactual worlds of early modern humans: H. sapiens's sorties into real and unreal worlds -- Chapter 11 H. sapiens, the rolling stone that gathered moss -- Chapter 12 The reunion that wasn't and the challenge that is -- Glossary -- References -- Person index -- Subject index