The Evolution of Culture: An Interdisciplinary View

by Robin I.M. Dunbar (Editor), Chris Knight (Editor), Camilla Power (Editor)

This book explores the ways in which contemporary evolutionary thinking might inform the study of the peculiarly human phenomenon of symbolic culture, including language, ritual, religion, religion and art.

Genres: Anthropology, History, Psychology, Science, Cultural

257 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Robin Ian MacDonald Dunbar FBA FRAI is a British anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist and a specialist in primate behaviour.

Dunbar's academic and research career includes the University of Bristol, University of Cambridge from 1977 until 1982, and University College London from 1987 until 1994. In 1994, Dunbar became Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at University of Liverpool, but he left Liverpool in 2007 to take up the post of Director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford.

Reviews

[Lawrence Sullivan]

If you might be interested in how chimps became chimps and humans became humans and why the stories seem so much the same, this is a good introduction to the riddle. You should come out of this read with more questions than you started with. That would mean this is an honest book.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview of the development of language, symbolic culture, religion, ect.

Multiple essays from multiple authors provides different viewpoints and insights.

Highly Recommended.