In particular, Ashley Montagu, representing a camp known as the "Blank State" theorists, who believed that man's behavior was entirely socially determined, marshaled fourteen scientists to refute Ardrey and his predecessors (chiefly Konrad Lorenz) in two volumes.

[6]Scientific American wrote about the controversy: For decades researchers have been locked in debate over how and when hunting began and how big a role it played in human evolution.

Recent analyses of human anatomy, stone tools and animal bones are helping to fill in the details of this game-changing shift in subsistence strategy.

In his excellent new book Robert Ardrey continues as the lyric poet of human evolution, capturing the Homeric quality of the subject that so many scientists by and large feel but are unable to put into words.

[7]The anthropologist Colin Turnbull reviewed the book for The New York Times: "This is a sober, well-reasoned plea for a sane appraisal of the human situation, of a re-evaluation of man's nature, of where he has come from and, much more important, where he is going.

It is brilliant in its summary of recent findings, it is wonderfully persuasive in its argument about our essential human nature, and it makes a satisfying unity out of Ardrey's thinking in all his books.

"[9] Antony Jay summarized the consensus: If I believe that Robert Ardrey's books are the most important to be written since the war and arguably in the 20th century, it is because he has satisfied to a quite unbelievable degree the demands of the ignorant layman and the requirements of the responsible scientist.

He draws on twenty years of wide reading and deep thinking, of predictable objection and surprising corroboration, to produce a unique and beautiful account of the making of man.