Promotional Information

"In the two epoch-making books that constitute Gesture and Speech, now felicitously published together in English, Andre Leroi-Gourhan gives an overall view as a leading physical anthropologist, ethnologist and prehistorian. From the first crude stone tools of Early Man to the astonishing art in the painted caves, Lerio-Gourhan paints a dynamic and fascinating picture of Man's capacity to master techniques and symbols." -- Dr. Jean Clottes, President of the International Committee for Rock Art "In demonstrating, more than a centruy ago, that the hand and brain or gesture and speech had worked together in the emergence and uninterrupted evolution of man, Andre Leroi-Gourhan drove human paleontolgy and prehistoric ethnology to methodological maturity. The English translation, long awaited, restitutes well the fertile modernity of this vision and of its full actuality, amplified by multiple discoveries of fossils and prehistoric cultures on earth. Enligh language readers will in turn marvel at its clarity of scientific thought and in its philosophical dimensions on the origins and the destiny of man." -- Dr. Denis VIALOU, Professor au Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle "If one were limited to reading only one of Leroi-Gourhan's major treatise, surely it would be Gesture and Speech, because this work is an example par excellence of why Leroi-Gourhan is among the most important voices in the human science. The volume is long overdue for non-French readers, who will at last get a sense of what they have been missing. No one has previously argued in such depth and such breadth for the evolutionary web of human technologies speech, body, and movements." -- Margaret W. Conkey, Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California