Why do people behave in such unreasonable, ineffective ways? Why can't we get along? Renowned science writer L. Sprague de Camp explains that some of our counterproductive and self-destructive tendencies are the result of humans spending over a million years foraging through the African savannah for food, grubbing for edible roots, and chasing other scavengers away from the kills of abler predators. In these activities we see our highly competitive nature and our tendency to view others as adversaries. De Camp examines our global wrong-headedness by considering the qualities that served as survival traits in our primitive past. This book is social anthropology at its best!