In his book "One Hand Clapping: Unraveling the Mystery of the Human Mind" (Prometheus/Swift Press, 2025), New York University neuroscientist Nikolay Kukushkin traces the evolution of human consciousness. He starts the story with the emergence of the first DNA on Earth and then highlights key evolutionary landmarks that paved the way to us — namely, modern-day humans. In the following excerpt, Kukushkin describes the "social brain hypothesis," which posits that human intelligence arose, in part, to help us keep track of our increasingly complex social groups.
