The Descent of Mind - Psychological Perspectives on Hominid Evolution

The Descent of Mind: Psychological Perspectives on Hominid Evolution (1999) ? Michael C. Corballis and Stephen E. G. Lea Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 9780198524199 Condition: Very Good Sold by: Crappy Old Books How a Bunch of Apes Developed Brains, Invented Civilisation and Eventually Created Reality Television Somewhere in the distant African past, millions of years before smartphones, income tax, motorway service stations and the invention of management consultancy, something quite extraordinary began happening inside the heads of our ancestors. Their brains were changing. Their behaviour was becoming more complicated. They were developing new ways of understanding the world, manipulating objects, communicating with one another and generally making themselves rather more troublesome than the average mammal. Eventually, this process produced human beings: creatures capable of composing symphonies, developing quantum mechanics, exploring outer space and spending forty-five minutes trying to remember why they walked into the kitchen. How did this happen? Why did the human mind evolve in the particular way that it did? What separates human intelligence from that of other animals? And at what point did our ancestors stop behaving like ordinary apes and begin developing the psychological peculiarities that would eventually lead to philosophy, organised religion, international warfare and people arguing with strangers on the internet? These are some of the enormous questions explored in The Descent of Mind: Psychological Perspectives on Hominid Evolution , edited by Michael C. Corballis and Stephen E. G. Lea and published by Oxford University Press. Bringing together research and perspectives on the evolution of human cognition, this scholarly collection examines one of the most remarkable developments in natural history: the emergence of the human mind from the evolutionary processes that shaped our ancestors. It is a subject of considerable scientific importance, not least because the human brain is responsible for practically everything we are proud of, along with a truly astonishing proportion of everything we should probably be embarrassed about. Evolution?s Most Complicated Piece of Grey Porridge Charles Darwin famously demonstrated that humanity was not exempt from the evolutionary processes governing the rest of the natural world. This was an unsettling proposition for Victorian society, which had spent centuries regarding human beings as rather special and was not especially delighted to discover that the family tree included creatures with unusually hairy relatives. Yet explaining the evolution of the human body is only part of the story. The development of the mind presents an even more complicated challenge. Bones and teeth fossilise. Stone tools survive. Ancient footprints can remain preserved for millions of years. Unfortunately, thoughts, memories, intentions and embarrassing personal fantasies do not leave much of an archaeological record. Nobody has yet excavated a prehistoric opinion. Consequently, scientists investigating the evolution of human psychology must draw upon evidence from several different disciplines, including evolutionary biology, comparative psychology, primatology, anthropology, neuroscience and the study of human behaviour. The Descent of Mind approaches this challenge through psychological perspectives on hominid evolution, examining how cognitive capacities may have developed and how the behaviour of our evolutionary relatives can help illuminate the origins of our own mental abilities. The resulting questions are fascinating. How did our ancestors acquire increasingly sophisticated mental representations of their surroundings? What evolutionary pressures favoured enhanced learning, memory and problem-solving? How did social relationships influence intelligence? And why did one lineage of primates eventually develop the capacity to contemplate its own existence, while others remain.…