A Different Kind of Animal: How Culture Transformed Our Species (The University Center for Human Values Series)

This book’s value lies not just in its eloquent presentation but also in its citing and righting of common misunderstandings of this view."--Richard McElreath, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology"A Different Kind of Animal is a fascinating and accessible introduction to the very influential ideas that Boyd and his collaborators have developed over the past three decades."--Stephen P. Boyd shows here in compelling style how our possession of culturethe passing on of learned informationexplains the highs, lows, and contradictions in our behaviors."--Mark Pagel, author of Wired for Culture: Origins of the Human Social Mind"What makes us unique? Are we really just smart chimpanzees? Why is our species both so cooperative and yet so violent? Addressing these questions, Robert Boyd adroitly combines detailed analyses of diverse societies, crystal-clear experimental studies, and rich descriptions of hunter-gatherer

Over the past two million years, culture has evolved to enable human populations to accumulate superb local adaptations that no individual could ever have invented on their own. We have evolved to become the most dominant species on Earth. This astonishing transformation is usually explained in terms of cognitive abilitypeople are just smarter than all the rest. This unique combination of cultural adaptation and large-scale cooperation has transformed our species and assured our survivalmaking us the different kind of animal we are today.Based on the

. Robert Boyd is Origins Professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University. His books include How Humans Evolved, Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution, and The Origin and Evolution of Cultures. He lives in Phoenix, Arizona