A Pelican introduction to the social and cognitive changes that gave rise to modern humans
What makes us human? How did we develop language, thought and culture? Why do we need them?
The past 12,000 years represent the only time in the sweep of human history when there has been only one human species. How did this extraordinary proliferation of species come about - and then go extinct? And why did we emerge such intellectual giants? The tale of our origins has inevitably been told through the 'stones and bones' of the archaeological record, yet Robin Dunbar shows it was our social and cognitive changes rather than our physical development which truly made us distinct from other species.
Robin Dunbar is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow of Magdalen College. He is best known for the social brain hypothesis, the gossip theory of language evolution and Dunbar's Number (the limit of 150 on the number of relationships that we can manage). His books include Evolutionary Psychology: A Beginner's Guide, How Religion Evolved and Friends.
