This chapter discusses the biological, philosophical, and anthropological assumptions at stake in the idea of humanity as the symbolic animal (Homo symbolicus). The argument comes in two parts. The first part discusses Raymond Tallis’s analysis of pointing. Pointing seems to offer a limit case, a kind of originary ground zero of symbolic communication. Children point before they speak. Chimpanzees, on the other hand, do not point. Can pointing therefore be considered the origin of symbolic communication and therefore of humanity? The second part examines this question by comparing Tallis’s story of human origin to the stories offered by Robbins Burling and Terrence Deacon. The point of this comparison is to show that Tallis does not go far enough in his attempt to integrate pointing into his theory of human origin. The chapter ends with the suggestion that there may be some residual naturalism lurking in Tallis’s philosophical anthropology.