The Clap of One Palm: How Inanimate Nature Gave Rise to the Human Mind

Life on Earth is an incomprehensible, ubiquitous frenzy teeming with millions of legs, branches, thorns, and teeth, in which we exist and from which we originate. For three and a half billion years, it existed without us, and now, in the last moments of history, from this intricate web of animals, plants, fungi, and microbes emerges a human who asks the question: who am I and what is the meaning of my, human, life?

In his debut book, evolutionary neurobiologist Nikolai Kukushkin gradually recreates a picture of the world from inanimate matter to the human mind in order to find answers to eternal questions in the past of our species.

It turns out that dinosaurs are to blame for human suffering, lungs exist thanks to lichens, and the main event in the lives of our ancestors over the last eon was their transformation into worms.

«The Clap of One Palm» is the story of humanity and its inner world, encompassing the entire journey from inorganic molecules to the emergence of language and told as if it were a chivalric novel or a mythical epic.