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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.
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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."
