Ape, Primitive Man and Child

by Alexander Romanovich Luria and Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky

In Ape, Primitive Man and Child, Luria and Vygotsky put forward a theoretical framework for explaining what makes us human. If it wasn’t for the evolution of our human genetic make-up, the human genome, then we wouldn’t be human. But the evolution of our human make-up is merely the precondition for our humanity. Our genome is very similar to when homo sapiens was first around 100,000 years ago, but in terms of how we live our lives, we are incomparable to our ancestors. So, in order to fully understand who we are, we need to go beyond just the evolutionary line and we need to look at the historical line of development, and also, finally, to understand individuals you have to look at their unique social relationships, their own life history.