A Story of Us

A New Look at Human Evolution

A Story of Us
Lesley Newson, Peter Richerson
RRP:
NZ$ 58.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 47.19
Hardback
h235 x 156mm - 336pg
1 Mar 2021 US
9780190883201
Out Of Stock
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It' s time for a story of human evolution that goes beyond describing "ape-men" and talks about what women and children were doing. In a few decades, a torrent of new evidence and ideas about human evolution has allowed scientists to piece together a more detailed understanding of what went on thousands and even millions of years ago. We now know much more about the problems our ancestors faced, the solutions they found, andthe trade-offs they made. The drama of their experiences led to the humans we are today: an animal that relies on a complex culture. We are a species that can DL and does DL rapidly evolve cultural solutions as we face newproblems, but the intricacies of our cultures mean that this often creates new challenges. Our species' unique capacity for culture began to evolve millions of years ago, but it only really took off in the last few hundred thousand years. This capacity allowed our ancestors to survive and raise their difficult children during times of extreme climate chaos. Understanding how this has evolved can help us understand the cultural change and diversity that we experiencetoday. Lesley Newson and Peter Richerson, a husband-and-wife team based at the University of California, Davis, began their careers with training in biology. The two have spent yearsDL together and individually DL researching and collaborating with scholars from a wide range of disciplines to produce a deep history of humankind. In A Story of Us, they present this rich narrative and explain how the evolution of our genes relates to the evolution of our cultures. Newson and Richerson take readers through seven stages of human evolution, beginning seven million years ago with the apes that were the ancestors of humans and today' s chimps and bonobos. The story endsin the present day and offers a glimpse into the future.
"In this highly original approach to telling the seven-million-year human story, Newson and Richerson bring our ancient ancestors back to life, showing us that the key to being human is not just having a larger brain: it is having highly interconnected minds that generate and share cultural adaptations. No Homo sapiens is an island. I loved reading this book, because it really is the ' story of us. ' " -- Jonathan Haidt, Thomas Cooley Professor of EthicalLeadership, New York UniversityDLStern School of Business and author of The Righteous Mind"With plainspoken erudition, Lesley Newson and Peter Richerson integrate narrative accounts and lucid descriptions to deftly guide the reader from the dawn of humanity, through dense thickets of scientific research, to the origins of agriculture, and into the modern age. A Story of Us provides a rich and accessible account of how humans evolved and why we are so different from other species. " -- Joseph Henrich, Professor and Chair of Human EvolutionaryBiology, Harvard University and author of The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous"A Story of Us is, without a doubt, the best current account of the evolutionary history of our species. The Newson-Richerson team skillfully blends engaging narrative with solid scientific review of recent exciting advances that illuminate the human origins. " -- Peter Turchin, Project Leader of Social Complexity and Collapse at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna and author of Ultrasociety: How 10,000 Years of War Made Humans the GreatestCooperators on Earth
Lesley Newson, Research Associate, Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, Peter Richerson, Distinguished Professor, Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis Lesley Newson is Research Associate at the University of California, Davis. Her first career was as a science communicator. She was a writer and producer of radio and television science programs for the BBC and has also written a number of books, including Devastation! the World' s Worst Natural Disasters (DK Publishing, 1998) and All About People (Scholastic, 1995). In her mid-40s, her growing interest in human evolution caused her to try a career change. In2002, she received a PhD for her investigation of potential evolutionary explanations for the recent rapid change in people' s beliefs about childbearing. This work led to her meeting, collaborating with, and eventually marrying herco-author. She continues to study the evolution of modern culture today. Peter J. Richerson is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Environmental Science and Policy at the University of California, Davis. During his first career, he studied the ecology of lakes, but he also became increasingly interested in human evolution. Beginning in the 1970s, he and colleague Rob Boyd were among the scholars who laid the foundation of cultural evolutionary theory. This work has been hugely influential in the development of "dual-inheritancetheory," which looks at how genes and culture co-evolve. His books with Rob Boyd include Culture and the Evolutionary Process (1985) and Not by Genes Alone (2005) (University of Chicago Press, 2005). His current researchis focused on cultural evolution, the origins of tribal and larger scale cooperation, and the origins of agriculture.
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9780190883201
Published: 1 Mar 2021
Published In: United States
Imprint: Oxford University Press
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Format: Hardback
Height: 235mm
Width: 156mm
Pages: 336

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