Darwin's Legacy

Scenarios in Human Evolution

By (author) Sue Taylor Parker, Karin Enstam Jaffe

Publication date:

13 June 2008

Length of book:

262 pages

Publisher

AltaMira Press

ISBN-13: 9780759103160

Darwin's Legacy: Scenarios in Human Evolution compares ideas about human evolution Darwin published in The Descent of Man in 1891 to 30 scenarios about the evolution of such unique human characteristics as bipedalism, hairless skin, secondary sex characters, language and culture that anthropologists and psychologists published between 1950 and 2006. It evaluates ideas about hunting and scavenging, aimed throwing, primitive warfare, aquatic life, courtship, and sign language in light of modern data on genetics, stone tools, fossils, and primate behavior. Parallels between Darwin's ideas and those of modern researchers are striking.

Part 1 Part I. Background
Chapter 2 Chapter 1. Scenarios in Human Evolution: Science or Fiction?
Chapter 3 Chapter 2. Guidelines for Modeling Human Evolution
Chapter 4 Chapter 3. Who Were Our Ancestors?
Part 5 Part II. Origins Models
Chapter 6 Chapter 4. Origins of Human Subsistence
Chapter 7 Chapter 5. Origins of Bipedalism
Chapter 8 Chapter 6. Origins of Human Life History
Chapter 9 Chapter 7. Origins of Human Bodily Displays
Chapter 10 Chapter 8. Origins of Language
Chapter 11 Chapter 9. Origins of Human Mentality
Chapter 12 Chapter 10. Origins of Cultures

Sue Taylor Parker and Karin Enstam Jaffe have given us a lively and illuminating history of how scholars have interpreted the many 'no-longer-missing links' that have been discovered since Darwin's day. A contentious dialogue of competing views on the origins of language, bipedalism, sociality, cognition, and culture, Darwin's Legacy provides a much-needed overview of what we think we know about how we got here.