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This book presents a comprehensive scientific reconstruction of human evolution, offering an original and integrative explanation for the emergence of the traits that define our species. It explores the evolutionary roots of a remarkable range of human characteristics from our hairless skin, nuanced facial expressions, and emotional vocalizations to male and female sexuality, language, creativity, consciousness, social norms, laughter, and sense of humor.
Rather than focusing on details of stone technologies and skull shapes, this theoretical study employs a rigorous evolutionary framework, grounded in explicitly stated principles, a coherent conceptual apparatus of psychological and social concepts, and a systematic methodology for evaluating evidence. Drawing on the extended evolutionary synthesis including cultural drive, multilevel selection, and niche construction the author weaves together insights from paleoscience, biology, psychology, and anthropology to trace the key forces and transitions that shaped our species.
The book introduces and synthesizes key concepts such as challenge-response dynamics, concerns-and-structures coevolution, trial-and-fixation mechanisms, self-domestication, operant conditioning, normativity, and internalization. It reconstructs the pivotal evolutionary phases of human development from the African springboard to the transformative Upper Paleolithic revolution highlighting how daily survival concerns, child-rearing, intergroup competition and alliance formation catalyzed evolutionary change.
Special attention is given to the role of group and sexual selection, the development of symbolic communication and social regulation, and the fixation of traits through genetic mechanisms. The book sheds light on often overlooked evolutionary phenomena, including the emergence of adolescence, life cycle formation, female mobility across groups, the difference between male and female eroticism, and the institutionalization of property and mating norms.
A concluding philosophical chapter portrays human nature as a paradoxical blend of the endless openness and deeply embedded ancestral legacies. The author offers speculative reflections on how the evolutionary past continues to shape contemporary challenges religiosity, sexuality, ethnic conflict, organized violence, and even our capacity for laughter and humor.
Table des matières
Logic of Approach, Levels, and Magic Wands of Evolution.- Basic Concepts and Evolutionary Principles for Theorizing Anthropogenesis.- Drivers and Mechanisms of Development.- Microsocial and Mental Processes of Sapientation.- Stages of Anthropogenesis.- Why Africa?.- Straight, Naked Body, Long Hair and Beards.- Socio-Evolutionary Drivers of Morphological Transformations.- Human Sexuality: Comparison with Primates, Multilayeredness, and Oddities.- The Nature of Sexual Machinery and the Origins of Gender Disharmony.- Eyes and Facial Expressions: Wordless Means of Communication.- Crying, Tears, Depression: Origins and Factors of Persistence.- Why We Laugh.- Adolescence, Libido, Menopause: Puzzles of Sexual Developmental Dyschrony and Dimorphism.- The African Springboard to Final Sapientation and Species Unity.- Male and Female Eroticism: Why We Are So Different.- Upper Paleolithic: Causes of the Middle Sapiens Revolution.- From Wandering Groups to Barbarian Chiefdoms: Settlement, The Neolithic, Violence, And Ethnicity.- Causes of the Emergence of Speech, Consciousness, and the the Self-Structure.- Multifaceted Humor: Origins and Evolutionary Role.- Human Nature: Multilayers and Openness.- In Lieu of a Conclusion. What We Have Come to and What Lies Ahead: Traps, Illusions, Challenges, Lessons, and Hopes.
A propos de l'auteur
Nikolai S. Rozov is Leading Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy and Law, Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, located in Novosibirsk Akademgorodok, Russia. His research spans the philosophy of history, humanistic ethics, macrosociology, the theory of revolutions, anthropogenesis, and early cultural evolution. In 1995, he interned at the Fernand Braudel Center under the mentorship of I. Wallerstein. For several years, he coordinated the "Macrohistorical Dynamics" network at the Social Science History Association (SSHA). Rozov is Author of 10 monographs and over 415 research papers. Additionally, he compiled the translated almanac "The World Time" and the book series "Theoretical History and Macrosociology."
