Human Evolution: A Pelican Introduction by Robin I. M. Dunbar

Human Evolution: A Pelican Introduction Reviews

• 
  Graeme Roberts

  This era will be remembered as the time of data science and machine learning, when massive amounts of data have begun helping us to understand, analyze, and control just about everything.
  
  This beautiful, exciting book shows that understanding our evolution and behavior as human beings requires exactly the opposite approach, because data is so scarce. Starting with little more than "stones and bones," the scant archaeological evidence of ancient primates, and adding the behavior and characteristics of our contemporary relatives among the apes, gibbons, and chimpanzees, Robin Dunbar infers and deduces a credible mystery story of who we are and how we got here. Given the paucity of data, it will certainly not be correct in every detail, but he takes what we know today and assembles a logical framework based on simple arithmetic calculations about how species spent their time. He then rolls in the effects of changes—such as eating meat, using fire daily for light and cooking, and even the development of laughter—and shows how they helped hominids fit the necessary daily activities into the time available, and thus survive...or not.
  
  Some great and important books are hard to read, but this one is eminently readable, at least in the hardcover version. The combination of a decent page size, relatively small margins, and an elegant typeface at a generous point size made it compelling. The useful diagrams and charts occupy a full page each, and the sections and chapters establish a comfortable rhythm. Hot dog!
• 
  Rossdavidh

  If, like me, you read the occasional popular science book about humans, you have probably at some point come across "Dunbar's Number". This is derived from the fact that, if you graph brain size (ok really relative size of certain parts of the brain to body size, but you get the idea) to average group size (e.g. how many chimpanzees sleep in a group at night, how many gorillas, how many bonobos, how many orangutans, etc.), you find a correlation. The bigger the brain (after taking into account body size, and looking just at the parts responsible for more abstract thought rather than muscle control), the larger the group. Follow this line up to human brain size, and it intersects this line somewhere around 150. This, is Dunbar's Number.
  
  Hunter gather societies: around 165. 18th century English villages: 160. 11th century English villages: 150. Nebraska Amish parishes: 112. Social network size (in 'small world' experiments): 134. Company size in Second World War armies: 180. Research specialties (sciences and humanities): 100-200. Median number of Facebook friends in 2014: 200.
  
  So, across a broad range of human cultures and time periods, we see that the preferred group size we can keep track of is between 100 and 200. It makes sense, once pointed out, that we would have a tendency to add people to the group up until the point that the political drama reaches the breaking point because people cannot keep track of all the different rivalries and relationships. Still, someone had to be the first to point it out (and test it in a rigorous way, and publish the results for others to see), and that someone was Robin Dunbar.
  
  Having heard about Dunbar and his Number for years, though, I somehow until now never read a book of his. In fact, I'm not sure I realized that he was still very much alive and actively researching. He seemed like one of those legendary founders of a field, like Pavlov or Milgram, whose work is often referenced but from whom no news can be expected. Au contraire.
  
  In this book, he divides human evolution up into five "Transitions", where we leveled up in our ability to interact with the world and each other. One viewpoint that he utilizes, which I had not seen used so extensively before, was that of the "time budget". In brief, it relates to the fact that it takes time to manage all those social relationships. You can't just throw 100 apes (of any species, including ours) in a group and expect them to get along. It will end in tears (or worse) if the individuals do not expend enough time with enough other individuals to keep the relationships in good shape.
  
  It's the sort of thing that pre-21st century scientists were not especially good at realizing. Insert here your own speculation on the difficulty that a male-dominated field has in realizing that relationships take time and effort. To Dunbar's credit, he does realize it, and has gathered together a lot of different data sources on how much time different species take in "grooming" (which in some species, like us, has been replace by "grooming talk", where we chat to perform the same social function that grooming once did).
  
  There is, of necessity, some speculation in here about how exactly we made the various transitions required to go from a chimpanzee- or bonobo-like ape, to what we are now. When exactly did fire come about? What about language? Did that come before or after singing and dancing? These questions are not entirely settled, but Dunbar has informed opinions on them, and without claiming there is no controversy or room for debate, he sets out clearly how he thinks it happens, and then shares the data that supports that informed guess. There are also a number of clear and helpful graphs and charts that help to make the relationships clear, especially if (like me) you prefer a visual display of information.
  
  It makes me wonder, what is my time budget? How much time do I spend on my social circle? Does writing a book review and then posting it on Goodreads count? Does arguing about things on Facebook actually do damage, creating a social grooming deficit which then needs to be repaired or paid back? It is the hallmark of a good popular science book that it not only tells you things, it prods you to ask interesting questions you would otherwise not have asked.
  
  I will be searching out more books by Dr. Dunbar (though not, perhaps, 150 of them).
• 
  muthuvel

  "You have to know the past  to understand the present"
  
  Inviting friends to dinner may seem like an important feature of civilized modern cultural habits but many may be oblivious of the fact why and how it all evolved; may date back to the time when there wasn't any human beings to hang around.
  
  The book is more than a typical traditional work on evolution of species specifically ours, homo sapiens and our dead family members.
  Rather than quoting the conventional accounts and facts relied upon the bones and artifacts, author utilized his erudition in explaining, speculating the human behaviour via social and cognitive aspects more in an understandable way maybe even to a typical teenager who's good enough to have knowledge that humans evolved from Monkeys.
  
  Author's unique statistical models and brain equations are highly successful in speculating on the behaviors like Bipedalism, Monogamous, Postponing the reward activities, Laughter (a great miracle), Mentalizing capabilities, symbolism, Cooking and many more interesting phenomena. The Tree of life is so intriguingly rich and complex.
  
  I knew almost nothing of Human Evolution and our family members. It was a privilege to know those species Australopithecines (familiar by the name LUCY), Homo Erectus, Ergaster, Heidelbergensis, Neantherdals and us, Anatomically Modern Humans. The legacy was so moving, spiritually enlightening to know that the small sized brain we possess, can help us understand things way beyond our reaches.
  
  
  
  “You dig deeper and it gets more and more complicated, and you get confused, and it's tricky and it's hard, but... It is beautiful.”
  
  A huge thanks to Net galley and Oxford University Press for this insightful advance copy.
• 
  Hamid

  Historically, the consensus has been that language evolved to allow humans to exchange factual information about the physical world, but an alternative view is that language evolved, in modern humans at least, to facilitate social bonding.
  
  Language has the obvious advantage that shifting some aspects of social bonding from a physical channel (grooming) to a vocal channel may allow several individuals to be ‘groomed’ simultaneously, allowing us to build a larger community. Language might do this in three quite different ways. One is by telling each other how we see the world (creating a common worldview); a second is through story-telling (stories about who we are and where we have come from); and the third is through making people laugh by telling jokes.
  
  Telling a story – whether about what happened in history, or about the ancestors or who we are and where we came from, or about the people that live beyond the horizon, or the inhabitants of a spirit world that none of us can experience directly – creates a sense of community by binding us into a network of people who share a common view of the world.
• 
  Clare O'Beara

  This interesting look at our primate ancestors, the great and smaller apes today, and ourselves, combines various researches, some of which will be familiar, some more newly learnt. There are many graphs and charts, usually easy enough to understand, showing clear progressions. Time requirements and energy use is the main concept through the Neanderthals, the big-brained apes and bigger brained humans needing more food, their social structures, the typical village size being 150 people throughout history.
  
  Some interesting factors are a look at monogamy and possible reasons for it - male protecting his offspring, male unable to cover enough ground to protect territories for more than one female, female selecting a fit male for food and protection etc. It seems that if a social group leaves the multi-male and multi-female shape, and either goes to harem or to monogamy, the monogamy is always a fixed end which cannot be returned from in that society. I was waiting for a look at bonobos but did not get it.
  
  In spare time, primates can socially interact such as grooming and selecting mates. Baboons get a nod here as they forage easily, but a large group of any ape would need to be constantly on the move to keep supplied, so smaller groupings occur and in the extreme, the orang-utan, solitary foraging takes place. I didn't see Sapolsky's comment that baboons have eight hours a day in which to make one another's lives miserable, though earlier we did get his work reduced to the association between low status and stress. If an animal can't adapt its diet and can't forage enough to find food, or has to worry about predators, it can't reproduce fast enough to replace population. Chimps can cope with either lion or leopard but not both. The glum outlook given is that great apes, particularly the orang-utan will go extinct (in the wild) through climate change and human pressure.
  
  Mary Leakey found, in 1978, a fossil set of footprints in volcanic ash. They show two adult people and a child. These have been dated to 3.6 m.y.a. so we know that humans walked upright in Tanzania at that time. By four m.y.a. there were various lineages of upright walkers around, some more successful than others. The book looks at the australopithecines and presents what we know of them, modelling their ecology and whether they were living like baboons or chimps. Why bipedalism? If your legs are longer than your arms it is a very efficient way of moving. It also gives you a better view and more cooling. The aquatic ape theory, not named here, is shrugged off with barely a sentence. We see that some communities lived in limestone caves in Africa which not only provided security but regulated temperature. Carbon-3 isotope plants, sedges and the like versus carbon-4 isotope plants, trees and shrubs, leave traces in the body so it is possible to reconstruct diets. We look at whether these hominids were monogamous or not. I was waiting for the contrast between the sperm of gorillas and chimps to be mentioned but it wasn't. Gorillas who get to mate are harem owners and see off other males, and their sperm apparently is full of junk chromosomes, damaged and useless. A small amount of the sperm is viable. By contrast almost all of a chimp's sperm is fit for purpose because a chimp has many male competitors. (Towards the end of the book the author mentions that chimps have bigger testes than gorillas.)
  
  Climate shifts having separated out various species to various diets and ways of life, some survived and some died out over time. We move on to the more modern distribution and changes. The author says the Homo floresiensis (hobbit) surprised us by persisting until 12,000 years ago, but is just a small subspecies which survived because it was isolated on an island, and why it became small is an interesting question for another time. I can explain that islands force an animal species to become small, from ponies to rhinos. That's well proven. There are a few exceptions like the Komodo dragon, but they are the biggest predators with abundant food.
  
  Fire is given as a probable answer to the demands of a bigger brain. From half a million years ago cooking fire sites are well distributed on the Old World continents. I have read in 'More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want' by Robert Engelman that a bigger brain forced babies to be born facing back from the mother instead of towards her chest, requiring a midwife and so forcing group living. I didn't see that mentioned here. Big brains have the advantage of allowing a species to adapt to cope with shifting environments, and in the Rift Valley lakes sometimes dried up, while the Sahara turned to desert; in the Eurasian continent the light levels were lower and the Ice Age advanced. We're told that monkeys and apes sleep up trees or cliff faces but humans don't climb cliffs well enough; I've seen the theory elsewhere that bipedalism evolved in hominids which particularly lived on cliffs as opposed to swinging under tree limbs (brachiation). We get the Denisovans mentioned, but so far we only know of them from a single cave of bones. They were cousins of Neanderthals, further east in Siberia. Here we get a good map showing distribution of archaic human sites and of the Neanderthals, which includes a point in west England. I'm presuming they got there by walking across Doggerland during the Ice Age. Social bonding while eating communally, especially over cooked food, is suggested.
  
  We're told that people at higher latitudes tend to have bigger eye sockets and visual processing parts of the brain than people in tropics, even today. This fits with Neanderthals doing well. They may have kept modern humans back from Europe for a long time. But 700,000 years ago the Out of Africa event saw humans on the move. The genetic lineages of all humans are explained, with only one family of four having moved out of Africa. Fire added time to the day, shortening night and allowing for tool making and socialising. With language, laughter and dance, the campfire became a vital part of society. That's convincing as we still enjoy a campfire sing-song today. We learn about speech, symbolism and art. We have altered bones to apes for speaking and hearing.
  
  I was sobered to read of a Palaeolithic burial near today's Moscow in which two children were found, who had been clothed with around 5,000 pierced beads on each, and 250 fox teeth in a belt on one, an ivory pin on the other. Other grave goods were placed with them. This grave was 200,000 years old.
  
  Goodness me, doesn't DNA tell you interesting things about our lice. And about conflict or bride theft and fathering of children. Worth a read. Then we move on to art, language and how it established mate rights, even to how we name our kin. The real issue, quoting Austen Hughes, is not who is related to us in the past, but who shares in interest in future generations with us. Religion, involving animal spirits, and trances follow.
  
  Settlements, farming, defensive walls and warfare await near the end of the book. Feasting and drinking with kin are suggested as a way of overcoming population stresses. Then we get the jokingly named 'cads versus dads' look at male behaviour in social groups and whether grandmothers are valuable as child-minders. Seems very modern.
  
  There are 50 pages of notes and references followed by an index of 15 pages. Needed, I have to say, for so many theories, facts and discussions are packed into this book. I still have not found an all-encompassing book on our evolution, comparison with apes and other early humans, and prehistory, as will be apparent, but Human Evolution crams in a great deal and looks at most of the modern theories and findings. If you have not read much on the topic, you'll learn a lot, and anyone will dip in and find something new or a new model of ancestral behaviours. This is easy enough to follow for non-scientists, well worth a read and deserves a place on the shelf for further reference.
  
  I downloaded an ARC from Net Galley for an unbiased review.
• 
  Allie

  I thoroughly enjoyed this one, and I'd like to read Dunbar's other work :)
• 
  Martin Empson

  A very disappointing book that has a mechanical approach to human evolution, rooted in mathematical biology. It leads to a contorted approach to evolution and social change that bewilders the reader with maths and doesn't answer its own central question, why are humans more than just great apes.
  
  
  Here's my complete review.
• 
  Nico Van Straalen

  The book applies Dunbar's hypothesis of the social brain and his theory of time budgets to human evolution over the last 5 million years, from Ardipithecus to anatomically modern humans. The effective brain volume or neocortex ratio, which we know in primates is strongly related to group size, is the main variable upon which Dunbar founds a big body of theory on social behavior in the hominin lineage, including the evolution of culture, religion, and language. I found this all very speculative. What conclusions on social behavior you can draw from fossils and artifacts is limited; it is not nothing but it is limited. What you can learn from primates is also limited which is illustrated by the totally different social systems of chimpanzees and bonobo's, two species which are equally related to humans. There is so much more solid stuff to tell about human evolution from genetics, developmental biology and the human body.
• 
  Stu

  A wealth of information presented in a refreshing conversational manner. Use of graphics was effective in conveying the message and reducing the density of the read. Two topics I would have enjoyed additional coverage from the author were the relationship between archaic and anatomically modern humans (AMH) and physical gestures, (sign language) as a possible precursor to vocal language.
  
  Communication does not require oral language to be effective. Simple gestures such a pointing and waving would seem to be a natural sequential step in developing a visual and subsequent oral language. Forensic investigation of indigenous sign languages might produce archaic roots similar to that found in vocal languages.
  
  It is hard to believe that Neanderthal alleles can persist in our AMH DNA unless they provided an evolutionary advantage. I question the argument that AMH could acquire these alleles independently by cohabitating for only 20-30k years in similar latitudes as Neanderthals while Homo Heidelbergenisis took hundreds of thousands of years to genetically diverge to Neanderthal continence. Is it not more likely the interaction between the Neanderthal and new comers was intimate to an extent that allowed the propagation of advantageous genetic traits in a new hybrid population that continues to exist today. This does fly in the face of the theory that Neanderthal were a different species. However, the invocation of speciation demarcations in human evolution based on physical attributes and the associated strict interpretation of non existent interbreeding or non fertile offspring, seems antiquated in light of growing genetic evidence. The simpler explanation is that Neanderthals, Denisovians and other coexistent hominins were not species in a strict sense and cross breeding lead to the observed genetic evidence we have today.
  
• 
  Will

  Robin Dunbar did an excellent job in researching, formatting, and reporting a frankly complex topic. The question of our origins has always been at the forefront of biology. In fact, a multidisciplinary effort is still attempting to elucidate the exact course of our species. Dunbar brings a psychologist's perspective to the topic of evolution and attempts to explain the idea that evolution affects not only our bodies, but also our brains, and in particular, our behavior. Amazingly enough, Dunbar makes the topic engaging, as dry as it has the potential to be, which is both impressive and appreciated.
• 
  Mgrdich Minasian

  it had very interesting studies on 'human' group formation and some of the other features and characteristics that we share as a species with the order Primates. And the approach that the Author took is based on mathematical modeling and fitting the data to the hypothesis they came up or someone else dis to explain some problems that they encountered or the former picture of human evolution had encountered. for example when the human started using fire to cook ,and when they started using language.
• 
  Vivian

  Interesting what drives our social circles and social needs as humans. The reason for why we care about who. How we evolved to different lifestyles and what kind of activities bond us together more efficiently.
• 
  Бисер Попов

  Робин Дънбар, еволюционният психолог и бивш директор на Института по когнитивна и еволюционна антропология към Оксфордския университет, сред чиито известни книги се открояват „От колко приятели се нуждае човек?“ и „Обгрижване, клюки и еволюция на езика“, отново не разочарова.
  
  В книгата „Човешката еволюция“ се разглеждат въпроси като какво ни прави хора, как сме развили езика, мисленето и културата и защо сме оцелели, а други човешки видове са се провалили. Последните 12 000 години са единственият период в историята на човечеството, когато е съществувал само един човешки вид. Как се е стигнало до това необикновено размножаване на видовете - а след това са изчезнали? Защо сме станали такива интелектуални гиганти? Историята на нашия произход неизбежно се разказва чрез „камъните и костите“ на археологическите находки, но Робин Дънбар показва, че не физическото ни развитие, а социалните и когнитивните ни промени са ни направили наистина различни от другите видове.
  
  Форматът на „Човешката еволюция“ излага основите на социалността на приматите и ги надгражда, като подчертава това, което Дънбар нарича основна рамка. Тази рамка се състои от два ключови елемента - хипотезата за социалния мозък и моделите за разпределение на времето. Той предполага, че между тези подходи е възможно да се постави всеки от основните видове хоминини, както се появяват във фосилните записи, по начин, по който можем да видим как са се справяли със съответните обстоятелства. За щастие, тъй като това е въведение в човешката еволюция, Дънбар не представя ��сички видове, които познаваме, а се концентрира върху тези, които можем да сравним със собственото си развитие. Отвъд рамката книгата е разделена на четири ключови прехода, които завършват със съвременните хора.
  
  Книгата е богато подкрепена със съдържателни графики, таблици и карти. Някои от данните може да са малко объркващи в началото, но е важно, че са включени. В крайна сметка Дънбар предполага, че въпросът за това как в крайна сметка сме станали хора, е свързан със социалните и когнитивните черти, които наистина ни отличават от другите човекоподобни маймуни.
• 
  Per Kraulis

  A thought-provoking review of the evolutionary development of Homo sapiens from the last common ancestor of the hominins about 6 million years ago. The story is built on comparisons of the other primates, fossil evidence, and inferences on levels of sociality from various sources. The differing hypotheses of e.g. when fire came under routine control are discussed. It is sometimes difficult to follow what is the generally accepted opinion of the scientific community, and what is the opinion of the author in controversial topics.
  
  The author makes the case that laughter and music have social roots and likely preceded language, and also discusses the evolutionary roots of religion. The author's use of a time budget model that tries to capture the temporal constraints of ecological niche, foraging and social activities and their consequences for the interpretation of various other evidence. The point is that the importance of one specific activity has consequences for the role of other activities. It must all fit together, which puts limits on which combination of activities are possible.
• 
  Francisco

  A great overview of Human evolution from the Australopithecus to the Anatomically Modern Human. What is particularly interesting here is the focus on social behavior and culture instead of simply bones and archaeological evidence. Dunbar presents studies on what the sizes of groups could be in certain environments, how the evolution of laughter, language, storytelling, dance and religion allow for more complex human cultures. The perspective that there is a mutual influence in physiological and behavioral changes is fascinating, and there is, in every chapter, something that makes you go "ohhh". Like why do people like to dance in the nighttime? Or why do men and women have different types of relationships with friends? Why do human women get the menopause? Fascinating stuff.
• 
  Giuseppe Veltri

  I have enjoyed a lot this book, it is a fascinating account of human evolution from the perspective of our social and cognitive abilities. Robin Dunbar, one of the most respected scientists on this matter, has managed to write a book that is a perfect balance of scientific precision and narrative fascination.
  Probably the best of volume of the Pelican introductions series.
  
  
• 
  Arkasha

  This book presents a really interesting angle on human evolution: a blend of physiological & socio-cultural adaptations over millions of years. It is detailed & may feel redundant at times. The topic is incredibly interesting but the writing execution lack focus & proper flow, it makes the reading experience rather laborious. But again, the actual content is A+!
• 
  John Stepper

  Fascinating. What I find particular insightful/interesting is the series of adaptions (laughter, music, language) that enabled humans to maintain larger and larger social groups - and what those adaptations, in turn, enabled us to do.
• 
  Laurie Mercer

  The Dunbar number is studied widely in business communities, but Dunbar has so much more to offer, from levels of intentionality and time analysis of different apes, to how we make friends. Fascinating book.
• 
  Steven

  Painfully politically correct, in ways.
• 
  Łukasz Rudy

  Too many words.
• 
  Hayley Dunning

  Interesting, but more of a thesis.
• 
  Riversue

  This has some fascinating theories on how our current behaviour evolved. I really enjoyed it.
• 
  James Bechtel

  4.5 stars.
• 
  Mad-In-Savage

  Very interesting and logically argued.
• 
  Alan Eyre

  Great! Instead of a “stones and bones” approach, it focuses on social/cognitive development. Lots of useful observations about natural group sizes tradeoffs involved in increasing them.
• 
  Wojtek Konieczny

  Tak naprawdę to powtórka z "Pchły, plotki a ewolucja języka" - wciąż mocne 8/10