Like our chimpanzee cousins, we, the naked apes, have evolved to flourish in our surroudings - a cultural environment largely of our own creation. For the human race, the critical evolution of the past million years has been the evolution of our minds. Yet, the author argues, that psychology, the very science that purports to understand us, has long been deeply ambivalent about Darwin's unsettling discoveries. He describes a reapproachment called evolutionary psychology. He examines how such a powerful theory, as Darwinism could have been disregarded by much academic psychology and shows why the relationship between the two must be readdressed. The theory and data of evolutionary biology and animal behaviour can illuminate many of our most basic mental processes and activities: language learning, perception, social understanding, and culture - the sharing of knowledge and beliefs. Ranging from nature-nurture to recent debates about the mind's structure, the book demonstrates how an evolutionary perspective helps to understand what we are, and how we got that way.