| Description |
1 online resource (480 pages) |
| Contents |
Cover; Title Page; Copyright Page; Table of Contents; Preface; Preamble; 1. Evolution to the advent of the mammals; Formation of the Universe and the Earth; Appearance of life; The Cambrian explosion of diverse life forms; The first chordates and vertebrates; The first tetrapods; The earliest mammals; Summary and conclusions; Further readings; 2. Primates to hominids and the advent of bipedalism; The Primates; The hominoids; The hominid lineage; The advent of bipedalism; Obstetrics and the pelvis; Summary and conclusions; Further readings; 3. Evolution of the genus Homo; Homo habilis |
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Homo erectusArchaic Homo sapiens and the Neanderthals; The morphology and origin of anatomically modern Homo sapiens sapiens; Evidence from molecular biology; Migration and expansion; Summary and conclusions; Further readings; 4. Art, culture, and prehistory; The art and culture of the Mousterian and Acheulian; The art of the European Upper Palaeolithic; The psychology of art, ancient and recent; Summary and conclusions; Further readings; 5. Language and communication; The coevolution of genotype and language; The prehistory of spoken language; Language, speech, and communication |
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(How) did language evolve?Critical periods and speech perception; Categorical perception; Categorization in nonhuman communication; Language mediation by a distributed network; Apes and language; A view of language evolution; Gesture and language; Summary and conclusions; Further readings; 6. The central and peripheral realization of speech; Speech and articulation; The supralaryngeal vocal tract in apes and humans; The supralaryngeal tract in apes and neanderthals; Did Homo habilis possess speech-related areas in the brain?; Speech-related areas and aphasia in Homo sapiens sapiens |
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Category specificity and semantic representationNeuroimaging and speech localization; Summary and conclusions; Further readings; 7. Tool use and praxis; Hands and tools; Nonhuman tool use; Hominid tool use; Movement, the frontal-basal ganglia circuits, and praxis; Apraxia: the loss of the ability to use tools; Praxis, tool use, and language evolution: is a synthesis possible?; Summary and conclusions; Further readings; 8. Encephalization and the growth of the brain; The allometric ratio; The growth of encephalization in the fossil record; Laminar and columnar organization in the cortex |
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Neurogenesis and brain-body growth and developmentPlastic reorganization in the adult brain; Whole-object recognition and "binding"; Brain size and intellectual capacity; Summary and conclusions; Further readings; 9. Intelligence, social intelligence, consciousness, and self-awareness; The evolution of intelligence; The theory of Machiavellian intelligence; Self-recognition in mirrors and self-awareness; Consciousness; Summary and conclusions; Further readings; 10. An overview; Postscript; References; Author index; Subject index |
| Summary |
The last decade has seen an explosive burst of new information about human origins and our evolutionary status with respect to other species. We have long been considered unique as upright, bipedal creatures endowed with language, the ability to use tools, to think and introspect. We now know that other creatures may be more or less capable of similar behaviour, and that these human capacities in many cases have long evolutionary trajectories. Our information about such matters comes from a diverse variety of disciplines, including experimental and neuropsychology, primatology, ethology, archa |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Brain -- Evolution.
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Behavior evolution.
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Human evolution.
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Genetic psychology.
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MEDICAL -- Physiology.
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SCIENCE -- Life Sciences -- Human Anatomy & Physiology.
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Behavior evolution
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Brain -- Evolution
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Genetic psychology
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Human evolution
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781317715870 |
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131771587X |
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