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A Pelican Introduction Human Evolution

Robin Dunbar · 1 HN comments
HN Books has aggregated all Hacker News stories and comments that mention "A Pelican Introduction Human Evolution" by Robin Dunbar.
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Amazon Summary
What makes us human? how did we develop language, thought and culture? why did we survive, and other human species fail? robin dunbar is an evolutionary psychologist and former director of the institute of cognitive and evolutionary anthropology at oxford university. His acclaimed books include how many friends does one person need? and grooming, gossip and the evolution of language, described by malcolm gladwell as 'a marvellous work of popular science. '
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Hacker News Stories and Comments

All the comments and stories posted to Hacker News that reference this book.
"Human Evolution" by Robin Dunbar (http://www.amazon.com/A-Pelican-Introduction-Human-Evolution...)

The book is a mind-boggling journey through our own evolutionary history and delivers surprising and sometimes funny insights on many aspects of our behavior as modern humans (e.g. it attempts to explain the origins of religion, dancing and music). The beauty of the book lies in the fact that it makes you understand in detail which processes have transformed us from primates to modern humans. Truly fascinating, beautiful stuff.

Most people probably know Dunbar from "Dunbar's number", which relates the relative brain size of animals to the number of individuals with which they live together (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number). This often (mis-)cited number is but one example of Dunbar's ingenious, math-driven approach to many problems in biology and evolution.

To maximize mind-blowing capacity, combine Dunbar with Jared Diamond's "The World Until Yesterday" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Until_Yesterday), which explains how our ancestors and many traditional tribes lived (and sometimes still live), and "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene), which explains many aspects of life and social organization using mathematics and evolution theory.

For me, this stuff is more mysterious, thrilling and captivating than any fiction book I've ever read.

karuneshkaushal
I read 'Guns, Germs and Steel' by Jared Diamond in College and it is single handedly the most insightful book I have ever read.

One of these days I will buy all of Jared Diamond's and Robert Greene's books and read them multiple times.

mrpsbrk
'Guns, Germs and Steel' is pure geographical determinism, dressed up as something else.
cpach
What is it more specifically that you disagree with in Diamond’s theories?
wolf550e
I suggest reading this: https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/2vf565/myths_of... and other posts in the AskHistorians SubReddit.
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