The Evolution of Culture: A Historical and Scientific Overview - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813527317 ISBN 13: 9780813527314

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 1999

Synopsis

The Evolution of Culture seeks to explain the origins, evolution and character of human culture, from language, art, music and ritual to the use of technology and the beginnings of social, political and economic behavior. It is concerned not only with where and when human culture evolved, but also asks how and why.

The book draws together original contributions by archaeologists, anthropologists, linguists and psychologists. By integrating evolutionary biology with the psychological, social and cultural sciences, it shows how contemporary evolutionary thinking can inform study of the peculiarly human phenomenon of symbolic culture. The contributors call into question the gulf currently separating the natural from the cultural sciences. Human capacities for culture, they argue, evolved through standard processes of natural and sexual selection, and properly be analyzed as biological adaptations.

The book is fully referenced and indexed, and contains a guide to further reading. It has been written to be accessible to the growing multidisciplinary readership now asking questions about human origins.

About this title

About the Author

CAMILLA POWER is a research student at University College, London.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0813527317
• ISBN 13: 9780813527314
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272
• Editor: Dunbar Robin, Knight Chris, Power Camilla