Peter Ffitch brings us an exciting new evolutionary theory that undermines humanity's grandiose views of our role in the natural hierarchy. While all other books about human evolution and hands have concentrated on our ability to manipulate objects and create artefacts, Hands, the Achilles' Heel reveals the much darker side to the use of hands that, as yet, has not been disclosed.
Peter traces our ancestors' evolution to become terrestrial primates, freeing our hands from arboreal locomotion and allowing them to grasp and hold other members of their own species for restraint and coercion. The consequent repercussions for humanity's social and sexual behaviour has resulted in a catastrophic loss of autonomy for the human female compared to other animal species. This also resulted in the heteronomous controls by which we now regulate our lives. Understandably, our loss of autonomy has lead to us becoming the most tense, anxious and fearful species that has ever lived, which tragically has given rise to our present desecration of the planet.
The question is, can we now move towards an enlightened future in which heteronomous controls become a relic of our dystopian past, allowing autonomy to regain its original priority and enabling us to live and survive within nature, just as the animals have done since the beginning of evolution?