"Language and culture are often seen as unique characteristics of human beings. In this book the author argues that our ability to use a wide array of emotions evolved long before spoken language and, in fact, constituted a preadaptation for the speech and culture that developed among later hominids.

Long before humans could speak with words, they communicated their emotional dispositions through body language; and it is the neurological wiring of the brain for these emotional languages that represented the key evolutionary breakthrough for our species."--BOOK JACKET.