Human Behavior And The Origin Of Man

How did we become the linguistic, cultured, and hugely successful apes that we are? Our closest relatives--the other mentally complex and socially skilled primates--offer tantalizing clues. In Tree of Origin nine of the world's top primate experts read these clues and compose the most extensive picture to date of what the behavior of monkeys and apes can tell us about our own evolution as a species. It has been nearly fifteen years since a single volume addressed the issue of human evolution from a primate perspective, and in that time we have witnessed explosive growth in research on the subject. Tree of Origin gives us the latest news about bonobos, the make love not war apes who behave so dramatically unlike chimpanzees. We learn about the tool traditions and social customs that set each ape community apart. We see how DNA analysis is revolutionizing our understanding of paternity, intergroup migration, and reproductive success. And we confront intriguing discoveries about primate hunting behavior, politics, cognition, diet, and the evolution of language and intelligence that challenge claims of human uniqueness in new and subtle ways. Tree of Origin provides the clearest glimpse yet of the apelike ancestor who left the forest and began the long journey toward modern humanity.

"Challenging many of the premises of conventional anthropological theory, 'On the evolution of human behavior' draws on recent evidence from psychobiology, linguistics, and ethology to trace the evolution of human social behavior from that of other primates. Rejecting the assumption that significant behavioral discrepancies between man and other primate species stem from equally significant psychological differences, Reynolds argues instead that small evolutionary changes may result in greatly increased complexity of behavior. His frankly ethological theory of human origins assumes that reason and instinct evolve together and that instinctual mechanisms are necessary for the emergence of human culture." -- book cover.

Up until now, there has been no explanation of how the outer layers of human behavior helped drive the evolution of ancient reptiles into modern-day humans. How did behavioral phenomena such as play, learning by copying, language, REM sleep, and storytelling influence the development of humanity as a whole? The development of play was particularly important in the evolutionary process, as it provided the bridge between the instinctive brains of reptiles to the powerful brains of birds and mammals. Play, however, is just one factor that can help explain evolution and the development of human behavior. In this book, you'll consider a gamut of issues, including Evolutionary stages The paradox of animals that feed on animals The importance and repercussions of copy-learning Primitive games The emergence of sleep The scientific community needs to think in new ways to accurately look at human evolutionary history. Take that leap, and consider new explanations of old behavior as you read The Evolutionary Origin of Human Behavior: How Play and Evolution Carried Us from Our Reptile Predecessors to the Storytellers We Are.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Where did we come from? Every civilization since the dawn of man has asked that question and every one has had its own creation myth to answer it. Every religion, be it ancient or modern, offers a story of the creation of the first man and woman. Science, too, has its own explanation of human origins, an explanation we might presume, based upon objective analysis of all available scientific evidence-but is it? In The Descent of Man, Darwin speculated modern humans arose in Africa to eventually populate the earth. This served as the basis for the now widely accepted contemporary theory of Recent African Origins, also known as (RAO). As a consequence of long term funding of research by the National Geographic Society and others, RAO has received widespread media exposure in both print media and television documentaries. If you've seen one of these documentaries, you will have heard of it. Based upon this, one might naturally assume RAO to be the only theory put forward by reputable anthropological researchers to account for the extinction of Homo erectus and advent of Homo sapiens, but to do so would be wrong. RAO is not the only possible explanation of human origin. There is another theory, the Multi-Regional Hypothesis (MRH), that better accounts for all available evidence. Why then, has it been ignored in favor of the RAO? RAO carefully interprets available evidence to avoid offending any of the groups that must not be offended in today's political climate in order to secure continued funding and thus proves itself politicized science at its most egregious. From Homo Erectus To Homo Sapiens will explain in detail, point by point, why the Multi-Regional Hypothesis (MRH) better interprets all available evidence- including neurological, genetic, biological, fossil, meteorological and anthropological-than does RAO. Each topic will be examined in detail and in terms the layperson can understand, but more than that, it is the author's hope that the reader will find the evidence herein not only accessible, but germane to his own life, for if we, the family of man, are to survive as a species, we must understand not only where we are going, but the truth about our origins.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Arising from a conference Rethinking the Human Revolution reconsiders all of the central issues in modern human behavioural, cognitive, biological and demographic origins in the light of new information and new theoretical perspectives which have emerged over the past twenty years of intensive research in this field. The 34 papers cover topics ranging from the DNA and skeletal evidence for modern human origins in Africa, through the archaeological evidence for the emergence of distinctively 'modern' patterns of human behaviour and cognition, to the various lines of evidence for the geographical dispersal patterns of biologically and behaviourally modern populations from their African origins throughout Asia, Australasia and Europe, over the past 60,000 years.