| Abstract |
"The story of human evolution has fascinated us like no other: we seem to have an insatiable curiosity about who we are and where we have come from. Conventionally, this story has always been told in terms of the "bones and stones" that make up the archaeological record--for the very good reason that this is often all we have to go on with any certainty. For the last half-century, archaeologists have been loath to stray far from the "hard evidence" lest they be accused of being speculative. Yet the stones and the bones skirt around what is perhaps the real, yet least well known, story of human evolution, namely the social and cognitive changes that gave rise to modern humans. Dunbar has a way of appealing to the human interests of every reader, as subjects of mating, friendship, and community are featured heavily. With a time span from prehistoric times to modern days, Robin Dunbar focuses on an aspect of evolution that has typically been overshadowed by the archaeological record: the biological, neurological, and genetic changes that occurred with each "transition" in the evolutionary narrative. The author's interdisciplinary nature--with his background as an anthropologist, zoologist, and accomplished psychologist--brings the reader into all aspects of the evolutionary process, as he explains how humans derived from the genetic code of the great apes, the schema and lineage of our ancestors, and the environmental factors that affected our ability to evolve. As definitive as the "stones and bones" are for the archaeological evidence, Dunbar explores far more complex psychological questions: What is it to be human (as opposed to being an ape)? And how did we come to be that way?"--Jacket. |
