“For over a century, an evolving microcosm of Anthropology’s turbulent history has hidden behind the staid façade of the American Museum of Natural History. From an insider’s perspective, the well-known ethnologist Stan Freed engagingly introduces us to an amazing cast of explorers, eccentrics, idealists, pranksters and forbidding intellectual - an unlikely mix that played a key role in establishing the science of Anthropology as we know it today.”

“Inside our skulls are fish, reptile and shrew brains, as well as the highest centers that allow us to integrate information in our unique way; and some of our newer brain components talk to each other via some very ancient structures indeed. Our brains are makeshift structures, opportunistically assembled by Nature over hundreds of millions of years, and in multiple different ecological contexts.”

“It is...highly probable that from the very beginning, apart from death, the only ironclad rule of human experience has been the Law of Unintended Consequences.”

“Hominids typically haven't so much adapted to change, as they have accommodated to it.”

“History books are a record of events which bring us to the world in which we live today.”

“Legends should stay legends otherwise they just become history, when the natural course of things is the other way around, from history to legend.”

“Today we are fighting Communism. Okay. If I'd been alive fifty years ago, the brand of Conservatism we have today would have been damn near called Communism and we should have been told to go and fight that. History is moving pretty quickly these days and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.”