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  • Published: 13 June 2024
  • ISBN: 9781804950166
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Narrator: Harvey Whitehouse
  • RRP: $36.99

Inheritance

The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World





How human nature made the modern world. How the modern world remade human nature.

Homo sapiens is a maker of unnatural history. For countless millennia, evolution has shaped our behaviour. But over just a few millennia, that behaviour has reshaped the world: building sprawling cities, global faiths, states, and empires. Nature made humanity, and humanity remade nature.

Here, one of the world's leading anthropologists reveals how our evolutionary past informed the birth and rise of global civilisation. Unveiling a visionary new way of studying human history - one that stunningly weaves together experimental psychology, anthropology and quantitative social science - Harvey Whitehouse uncovers the three evolutionary biases that shape our social behaviour: conformism, religiosity and tribalism. And he reveals how these biases were harnessed and extended to produce the greatest revolutions in human history, from the transition to agriculture to the rise of the first bureaucracies and organised religions. Above all, he argues that only by understanding our natural biases can we hope to survive the challenges of our unnatural present - from violent criminality to environmental meltdown.

The result is a landmark study of the past and future of the world we made. It transforms our understanding of who we are and who we can be.

  • Published: 13 June 2024
  • ISBN: 9781804950166
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: Audio Download
  • Narrator: Harvey Whitehouse
  • RRP: $36.99

About the author

Harvey Whitehouse

Professor Harvey Whitehouse is Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and Director of the Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion. One of the world’s leading experts on the evolutionary basis of human culture, Whitehouse has spent four decades studying some of the most extreme groups on earth: from the battlefields of the Arab Spring, via millenarian cults on Pacific islands, to violent football fans in South America. Along the way, he has undertaken research at some of the world’s most important archaeological sites, brain-scanning facilities, and child psychology labs – all with a view to pioneering a new, scientific approach to the study of human society. Whitehouse’s work has featured in the Telegraph, Guardian, Scientific American and New Scientist, and he has delivered talks at the World Economic Forum and the United Nations. He lives in Oxford.

Praise for Inheritance

A compelling, thoughtful, nuanced, and ultimately hopeful new perspective on our history, present crises, and future potential . . . This book is a masterpiece – important, thought-provoking, and great fun to read.

KATE FOX, author of Watching the English

This fascinating book combines ground-breaking research with compelling storytelling to reveal how humanity’s deepest tendencies towards conforming, believing and belonging have profoundly shaped our many histories and current realities . . . Profoundly thought-provoking – dive in.

KATE RAWORTH, author of Doughnut Economics

A bold and sweeping analysis that ranges widely through time, across geographies and through different kinds of human societies. A book of rare ambition and scope.

PETER FRANKOPAN, author of The Silk Roads

Remarkably readable . . . A powerful argument that the behaviour change we need is more likely to occur if we make use of our evolved human nature, rather than seek to transcend it.

PETER SINGER, author of Animal Liberation

A profoundly important book, of breathtaking scope. Whitehouse shows how evolution sculpted our psychological make-up, how we overcame its limitations over the course of world history, and how we can wield this knowledge to face the challenges of the future. Full of deep insights into human nature, this is a work of compelling conviction by a master in the field.

LEWIS DARTNELL, author of Being Human

An insightful and breathtaking exploration of humanity’s evolutionary baggage that explains some of our species’ greatest successes and failures.

YUVAL NOAH HARARI, author of Sapiens

This lucid and original book is important not only as a guide to underlying dynamics in contemporary society but also as an exemplary interweaving of approaches from the natural and social sciences.

RICHARD WRANGHAM, author of Catching Fire

A brilliant synthesis of insights from psychology, anthropology, and big historical data analytics that throws penetrating light on the evolutionary trajectories of human societies, and on how we collectively can shape a better future for humanity.

PETER TURCHIN, author of End Times

If you spend a lot of time thinking the world seems to have gone mad, bad and dangerous, this thoughtful and thought-provoking book won't just help you work out why that might be – it will also help you see a better path forward.

KRISHNAN GURU-MURTHY, Channel 4 News presenter

A very powerful, provocative and inspiring analysis of the human condition which seeks to explain where our societies are going wrong today - and how to put them right. Whitehouse bravely takes an ambitious interdisciplinary view that captures the sweep of history, tackling topics ranging from social media and modern political polarization to ancient religious cults, nomadic societies and more. His arguments about the three core features shaping humans - conformity, religiosity and tribalism - are thought-provoking, and offer an excellent lens to frame events today. Compelling and highly readable, this book shows why anthropology matters.

GILLIAN TETT, Provost of King's College, Cambridge

Could the very same features of human nature that have brought us to the brink, Whitehouse asks, be harnessed to fundamentally reshape our civilisation to one more conducive to human flourishing? . . . Ranges widely across disciplines and timescales to formulate his exhilarating narrative of human history . . . Enthralling and mind-expanding . . . A book of profound value.

Irish Times

A thought provoking look at social forces, and the ways ordinary people can change the world.

Guardian

Inheritance explains who we are and who we could be . . Convincingly argues that we must draw on the lessons of history to manage our evolved psychology more creatively in the future.

Psychology Today

One of the best books on the evolutionary inheritance of the modern human world which you are likely to read . . . perceptive and provocative. In a crowded intellectual field, not always notable for underclaiming or sophistication, Inheritance buzzes with ideas that demand attention.

Church Times
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