The Ape that Understood the Universe

The Ape that Understood the Universe is the story of the strangest animal in the world: the human animal. It opens with a question: How would an alien scientist view our species? What would it make of our sex differences, our sexual behavior, our child-rearing patterns, our moral codes, our religions, languages, and science? The book tackles these issues by drawing on ideas from two major schools of thought: evolutionary psychology and cultural evolutionary theory. The guiding assumption is that humans are animals, and that like all animals, we evolved to pass on our genes. At some point, however, we also evolved the capacity for culture - and from that moment, culture began evolving in its own right. This transformed us from a mere ape into an ape capable of reshaping the planet, traveling to other worlds, and understanding the vast universe of which were but a tiny, fleeting fragment.

I was very excited to read this book given the title and the excellent reviews that I had read.  The first chapter did not disappoint.  The second chapter, likewise, was an enjoyable read.  Beginning in the third chapter, it seems that Stewart-Williams lost the premise of the book and focussed on human sexual development more than other aspects.  The imagined alien became solely interested in sex.  There is so much more to the human animal than sex, but Stewart-Williams did not address those attributes.