For most people, gesture refers to a primitive, non-intellectual expression of feeling, a rudimentary and not too important kind of communication. The very idea of humans pointing and waving parts of their bodies at each other, themselves, or their gods, appears atavistic, a return to a time before speech; to the origin of the species, to simian chatter or cavemen grunts, to modes of sociality and sensemaking overtaken by the development of language. In relation to the spoken word and the visual image, gesture is a poor, unsophisticated third; pre-rational and retrograde, belonging with certain ceremonies, rituals of the body, ancient dance practices, festivals, sacrifices to the gods; offering little to contemporary discourse beyond a minor anthropological and perhaps artistic interest.