"Intelligence" has long been considered to be a feature unique to human beings, giving us the capacity to imagine, to think, to deceive, to make complex connections between cause and effect, to devise elaborate stategies for solving problems. However, like all our other features, intelligence is a product of evolutionary change. Until recently, it was difficult to obtain evidence of this process from the frail testimony of a few bones and stone tools. It has become clear in the last 15 years that the origins of human intelligence can be investigated by the comparative study of primates, our closest non-human relatives, giving strong impetus to the case for an "evolutionary psychology", the scientific study of the mind.
Introduction: the limits of fossil evidence ; 1. Taxonomy and the reconstruction of evolution ; 2. What is intelligence and what is it for? ; 3. How animals learn ; 4. Why animals learn better in social groups ; 5. Imitative behaviour in animals ; 6. Understanding how things work ; 7. Understanding minds: doing and seeing, knowing and thinking ; 8. What use is a theory of mind? ; 9. Planning and thinking ahead ; 10. Apes and language ; 11. Food for thought ; 12. Machiavellian intelligence ; 13. Testing the theories ; 14. Taking stock