Read more
What set our ancestors off on a separate evolutionary trajectory was the ability to flex their reproductive and social strategies in response to changing environmental conditions. Exploring new cross-disciplinary research that links this capacity to critical changes in the organization of the primate brain, Social DNA presents a new synthesis of ideas on human social origins - challenging models that trace our beginnings to traits shaped by ancient hunting economies, or to genetic platforms shared with contemporary apes.
List of contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Introduction: Some Givens
Chapter 1. Perspectives on Anisogamy
Chapter 2. First Families
Chapter 3. Paleoecology and Emergence of Genus
Homo Chapter 4. Paleolithic Dinner Pairings: Red or White?
Chapter 5. Signature Hominin Traits
Chapter 6. Kinship and Paleolithic Legends
Chapter 7. Kinship as Social Technology
Epilogue
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
M. Kay Martin has a diversified research, planning, and management background in the academic, public, and private sectors; she has taught at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and has since held executive posts in applied anthropology, environmental research, resource conservation, and other fields. She was the principal author of Female of the Species (1975, Columbia University Press) and has also published ethnohistorical and cross-cultural studies on foraging societies.
Summary
Presents a new synthesis of ideas on human social origins based upon the evolution of behavioral plasticity and the process of multilevel selection. What set our ancestors off on a separate evolutionary trajectory – what made them human...
