Driven: How Human Nature Shapes our Choices

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HOW THE MODERN HUMAN MIND EVOLVED

Humans are social animals endowed with reason.

—ARISTOTLE

In 1970 one of the authors went on safari in Kenya and Tanzania. Four scenes from that trip are indelibly etched in memory. The first was a long talk with Jane Goodall at her campsite. As a pioneer of the study of chimpanzees in their natural habitat, she laid the foundation for modern knowledge of the behavior of chimpanzees, the closest living relative of the species that split from the primate line to start the multimillion-year evolution to modern humans.

The second was a stop at Olduvai Gorge, where Mary Leaky pointed out the spot where she and her husband George Leaky had discovered the 1.75 million-year-old skull of Zinjanthropus man. These remains, ...