What changed in the three million years of human evolution? Were
there tipping points that made us more recognisably human? In this
innovative study, Clive Gamble presents and questions two of the most
famous descriptions of change in prehistory. The first is the human
revolution when evidence for art, music, religion and language
appears. The second is the economic and social revolution of the
Neolithic. Gamble identifies the historical agendas behind research on
origins. He proposes an alternative approach that relates the study of
change to the material basis of human identity. Rather than revolutionary stages, Gamble makes the case that our earliest prehistory is a story
of mutual relationships between people and their technology. These
developing relationships resulted in distinctive identities for our earliest
ancestors and continue today.