Robert Ardrey

"A territory is an area of space which an animal guards as its exclusive possession and which it will defend against all members of its kind. In this revolutionary book Robert Ardrey takes a concept familiar to every biologist, brings together for the first time a fair sampling of all scientific observations of this form of behavior, and demonstrates that man obeys the same laws as does many another animal species."--The dust-jacket front flap.

A Personal Inquiry Into the Animal Origins of Property and Nations

The Territorial Imperative

A Personal Inquiry into the Evolutionary Source of Order and Disorder

Social Contract

African Genesis

In 1955 on a visit to South Africa, Robert Ardrey became aware of the growing evidence that man had evolved on the African continent from carnivorous, predatory stock, who had also, long before man, achieved the use of weapons. A dramatist, Ardrey's interest in the African discoveries sprang less from purely scientific grounds than from the radical new light they cast on the eternal question: Why do we behave as we do? Are we naturally inclined towards war and weapons? From 1955 to 1961, Ardrey commuted between the museums and libraries and laboratories of the North, and the games reserves and fossil beds of Africa trying to answer that question. Eventually, his investigation expanded to include nationalism and patriotism, private property and social order, hierarchy and status-seeking, even conscience. All revealed roots in our most ancient animal beginnings and parallels in primate societies. African Genesis is at once the story of an unprecedented personal search and a story of man that had never before been told. It is a shocking book in that it challenges assumptions of human uniqueness that color every segment of modern thought and every aspect of our daily life. While evolutionary science has advanced markedly since Ardrey's times, his insights on human behavior have a timeless quality and African Genesis remains a classic reference for anyone exploring life's biggest questions. Praise for the 1961 edition: "It is fate and fortune of some books to mark or make a turning point in science and culture. This I believe African Genesis will do." Dr Harlow Shapley, Harvard University "The most enjoyable and stimulating book on the evolution of man that has been published for some time." The Nation "What this sensational book presents is a new and radical interpretation of human behavior. Since Ardrey has written it with excitement, clarity and style, the book will undoubtedly be widely read and cause widespread controversy. But African Genesis also deserves the most serious attention on the part of scientists as well as laymen." Dr Kenneth Oakley, Leading British Anthropologist, Senior Principal Scientific Officer, British Museum "Mr Ardrey's African Genesis is a fascinating drama played on a very broad and deep stage of space, time, biological evolution and ideas. The theme develops around man's striving to collect evidence and to understand the relational orders and timed sequences of living organisms. The search is for rational light on the true place of man himself in these biotic orders, and in the vast sweeps of the controlling environments. In this high drama the characters enter, leave relics and artifacts, act their roles as species, express their views and then exit. Among the characters are men of prehistory, nonhuman primates and the searching scientists themselves. The latter quarrel and dispute, cooperate and agree, strive for status and retreat from controversy. They are 'humans' as portrayed skillfully by Ardrey. Nevertheless, they contribute to the slowly advancing understanding of man in his living world or to what Ardrey describes as a revolution of biological conceptions." C. R. Carpenter, Penn State University "This quarrel about the innate nature of man began outside the gates of Eden, was continued by Darwin and Wallace and now looms menacingly across the threshold of the United Nations. Mr Ardrey has peered into our inner human darkness with wisdom gained from discoveries of natural history." Loren Eiseley, Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science, University of Pennsylvania

A Personal Investigation Into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man

Imaginative adventure story set in a mythical totalitarian state.

The Brotherhood of Fear

Wendy Smith

Nellise Child

Allie Mulholland

Frank Redfield

The most famous Theatre company in America, The Group Theatre, only produced 23 plays in their 10 year existence, and only a few of those are currently in print. Though they shaped the future of America drama, many of these plays have been long out of print, or were never published. For the first time EVER, 2 of these plays see publication for the first time ever - Nellise Child's WEEP FOR THE VIRGINS and Robery Ardrey's CASEY JONES finally see publication in this volume, along with Mr. Ardrey's classic THUNDER ROCK! Weep for the Virgins: A Bitter Comedy by Nellise Child was presented by the Group in 1935 under the direction of Cheryl Crawford and featured the talents of Jules Garfield, Phoebe Brand, Eunice Stoddard, J.E. Bromberg, Margaret Barker and many more. In Weep, we meet the Jobes: 3 sisters, the original dance mom, a father with dreams of fortunes in frog legs, and his Bible toting, quoting mother. Employed by The Blue Ocean Cannery, the untalented sisters are lead to believe they will have famous lives waiting for them… if only they can get to Hollywood, by whatever means it takes. Act by act, each of the sisters meets her ruin, driven there by their mother's poisonous love. In the first on his two plays for the Group Theatre, Casey Jones, Robert Ardrey tells a tale of man fixated on a machine. Like his namesake of the famous ballad, Casey grows up a man of the railroad. So much so, that he often neglects his family in favor of his career and his love for his locomotive. As he approaches his 50th birthday and begins to have trouble with his eyesight, his days with the railroad may be coming to an end, and he is forced to question his identity. Nearly a century before our obesseion with the computer, iPad, and other gadgets seem to consume our everyday life, Ardrey predicted how man would become “willing slaves to their machines.” In the classic play Thunder Rock, successful author and former reporter, David Charleston becomes so disturbed by the state of the world; he takes a job as a lighthouse keeper and the sole resident of Thunder Rock Island. When he notices a memorial plaque dedicated to a sailing ship of immigrants who fatally crashed on the island 90 years prior, he starts to imagine how ideal life was in their time. Soon, they begin appearing to him. At first he controls them, until they decide to teach him about the eternal struggles of life. This classic play became one of the most important plays in Europe during World War II and played continuously in London throughout the bombings.

The Lost Group Theatre Plays

"Violation of biological command has been the failure of social man. Vertebrates though we may be, we have ignored the law of equal opportunity since civilization's earliest hours. Sexually reproducing beings though we are, we pretend today that the law of inequality does not exist. And enlightened though we may be, while we pursue the unattainable we make impossible the realizable." In his two previous books, Robert Ardrey exploded a series of philosophical landmines. African Genesis (1961) introduced his new evolutionary approach to an understanding of men. Then came The Territorial Imperative (1966), whose title is now a common phrase in our language. The Social Contract is the third in the series, and it denies that men are created equal - but that they deserve absolute equality of opportunity. Robert Ardrey maintains that since the publication of Rousseau's Social Contract two centuries ago, men have wasted social resources, converted much of education into a process of brain-washing, committed themselves to one political insane asylum after another, all in pursuit of a goal that is a natural impossibility in any sexually reproducing species. Discarding the myth, Robert Ardrey combines his wealth of knowledge of animal ways with the new insights of modern biology and the newest revelations concerning human evolution to probe perplexing contemporary problems: the revolt of the young, the status struggle and the role of leadership, population control, urban overcrowding, violence in civilized life. This brilliant classic offers a powerful challenge to accustomed thought. Praise for the 1970 edition: "Robert Ardrey's The Social Contract is as imaginative and exciting as his African Genesis or The Territorial Imperative, but this new book is broader in scope, better balanced, and more philosophical than its predecessors. I disagree with some of Ardrey's opinions concerning human aggression, because I have greater faith than he has in the power of environmental conditioning. But this does not affect my conviction that The Social Contract will be of immense value in helping the public to probe into the dark and misty areas where zoology, anthropology, and prehistory join to account for the origins of man as a social animal." - Rene Dubos, Rockefeller University

Robert Ardrey

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