- Unique in bringing an interdisciplinary approach to one of the most exciting areas of current behavioural science research.
- Contains papers by distinguished researchers from Europe and the United States at the forefront of their respective disciplines.
The 14 contributions testify to the increasing co-operation which is bringing together biologists, primatologists, archaeologists, psychologists, linguists and anthropologists who share a common interest in the study of social and cultural behaviour from an evolutionary perspective. The papers range in topic from cultural and social behaviour among non-human primates, through the interaction of cognitive development with social organization during the Upper Palaeolithic, to behaviour (including linguistic behaviour) among modern humans. This volume reflects the important recent developments in such areas as behavioural ecology, evolutionary psychology, and the origin and function of language.
The volume is edited by Lord Runciman, Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the British Academy, John Maynard Smith, Emeritus Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, and Robin Dunbar, Professor of Psychology at the University of Liverpool.
The papers arise from a discussion meeting held at the Royal Society in April 1995. | CONTENTS - Introduction, W G Runciman
- Social Evolution in Primates: The Role of Ecological Factors and Male Behaviour, Carel P van Schaik (summary)
- Determinants of Group Size in Primates: A General Model, R I M Dunbar (summary)
- Function and Intention in the Calls of Non-Human Primates, Dorothy L Cheney & Robert M Seyfarth (summary)
- Why Culture is Common, but Cultural Evolution is Rare, Robert Boyd & Peter J Richerson (summary)
- An Evolutionary and Chronological Framework for Human Social Behaviour, Robert A Foley (summary)
- Friendship and the Banker?s Paradox: Other Pathways to the Evolution of Adaptations for Altruism, John Tooby & Leda Cosmides (summary)
- The Early Prehistory of Human Social Behaviour: Issues of Archaeological Inference and Cognitive Evolution, Steven Mithen (summary)
- The Emergence of Biologically Modern Populations in Europe: A Social and Cognitive ?Revolution??, Paul Mellars (summary)
- Responses to Environmental Novelty: Changes in Men?s Marriage Strategies in a Rural Kenyan Community, Monique Borgerhoff Mulder (summary)
- Genetic Language Impairment: Unruly Grammars, M Gopnik, J Dalalakis, S E Fukuda, S Fukuda & E Kehayia (summary)
- The Emergence of Cultures among Wild Chimpanzees, Christophe Boesch (summary)
- Terrestriality, Bipedalism and the Origin of Language, Leslie C Aiello (summary)
- Conclusions, John Maynard Smith
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