Why are humans everywhere prone to believe in ghosts?
How might our tendency to imitate one another be contributing to the climate catastrophe?
And does our deep evolutionary past impel us to vote for strongmen?

In 1987, Harvey Whitehouse went to live with an indigenous community deep in the Papua New Guinea rainforest. His experiences there convinced him that, far from being wildly different, humans are fundamentally alike: their beliefs and behaviours rooted in a set of evolutionary urges that can be found in any society, anywhere.

Here, Whitehouse roves across twelve millennia and five continents to uncover how these evolved urges have both shaped and been reshaped by human history. Along the way, he shows that this ancient inheritance does not just hold the key to explaining the modern world – but perhaps also to changing it.

How have our emotions shaped the course of human history? And how have our experience and understanding of emotions evolved with us? We humans like to think of ourselves as rational creatures, who, as a species, have relied on calculation and intellect to survive. But many of the most important moments in our history had little to do with cold, hard facts and a lot to do with feelings. Events ranging from the origins of philosophy to the birth of the world's major religions, the fall of Rome, the Scientific Revolution, and some of the bloodiest wars that humanity has ever experienced can't be properly understood without understanding emotions. In A Human History of Emotion, Richard Firth-Godbehere takes readers on a fascinating and wide-ranging tour of the central and often under-appreciated role emotions have played in human societies around the world and throughout history - from Ancient Greece to Gambia, Japan, the Ottoman Empire, Britain, and beyond. Drawing on psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, art and religious history, A Human History of Emotion vividly illustrates how our understanding and experience of emotions has changed over time, and how our beliefs about feelings - and our feelings themselves - profoundly shaped us and the world we inhabit.

The book focuses on the evolutionary impact of horizontal gene transfer processes on pathogenicity, environmental adaptation and biological speciation. Newly acquired genetic material has been considered as a driving force in evolution for prokaryotic genomes for many years, with recent technical developments advancing this field further. However, the extent and implications of gene transfer between prokaryotes and eukaryotes still raise controversies. This multi-authored volume introduces various means by which DNA can be exchanged, covers gene transfer between prokaryotes and their viruses as well as between bacteria and eukaryotes, such as fungi, plants and animals, and addresses the role of horizontal gene transfer in human diseases. Aspects discussed also include the relevance for virulence and drug resistance development on one hand, and for the occurrence of naturally derived antibiotics and other secondary metabolites on the other hand. This book offers new insights to anyone interested in genome evolution and the exchange of DNA between the different domains of life, the genetic toolkit for adaptation and the emergence of multidrug resistant bacteria.

Since the 1980s, a renewed understanding of molecular development has afforded an unprecedented level of knowledge of the mechanisms by which phenotype in animals and plants has evolved. In this volume, top scientists in these fields provide perspectives on how molecular data in biology help to elucidate key questions in estimating paleontological divergence and in understanding the mechanisms behind phenotypic evolution. Paleobiological questions such as genome size, digit homologies, genetic control cascades behind phenotype, estimates of vertebrate divergence dates, and rates of morphological evolution are addressed, with a special emphasis on how molecular biology can inform paleontology, directly and indirectly, to better understand life's past. Highlighting a significant shift towards interdisciplinary collaboration, this is a valuable resource for students and researchers interested in the integration of organismal and molecular biology.

While we joke that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, our gender differences can't compare to those of other animals. For instance: the male garden spider spontaneously dies after mating with a female more than fifty times his size. Female cichlids must guard their eggs and larvae--even from the hungry appetites of their own partners. And male blanket octopuses employ a copulatory arm longer than their own bodies to mate with females that outweigh them by four orders of magnitude. Why do these gender gulfs exist? Introducing readers to important discoveries in animal behavior and evolution, "Odd Couples" explores some of the most extraordinary sexual differences in the animal world. From the fields of Spain to the deep oceans, evolutionary biologist Daphne Fairbairn uncovers the unique and bizarre characteristics--in size, behavior, ecology, and life history--that exist in these remarkable species and the special strategies they use to maximize reproductive success. Fairbairn describes how male great bustards aggressively compete to display their gorgeous plumage and large physiques to watching, choosey females. She investigates why female elephant seals voluntarily live in harems where they are harassed constantly by eager males. And she reveals why dwarf male giant seadevils parasitically fuse to their giant female partners for life. Fairbairn also considers humans and explains that although we are keenly aware of our own sexual differences, they are unexceptional within the vast animal world.

Looking at some of the most amazing creatures on the planet, "Odd Couples" sheds astonishing light on what it means to be male or female in the animal kingdom.

This textbook provides a collection of case studies in paleoanthropology demonstrating the method and limitations of science. These cases introduce the reader to various problems and illustrate how they have been addressed historically. The various topics selected represent important corrections in the field, some critical breakthroughs, models of good reasoning and experimental design, and important ideas emerging from normal science.

This 2-volume set provides a state-of-the-art study of the fossil record and taxonomy of the main vertebrate groups from Greece. Greece stands between 3 continents and its vertebrate fossil record is of great importance for paleontological and evolutionary studies in Europe, Asia and Africa. Fossils from classic, world-famous localities (e.g., Pikermi, Samos) form an essential part of the collections of the most important museums in the world and have been studied by numerous scientists. Recent paleontological research led to the discovery and study of numerous new sites. The volumes contain a taxonomic review of all named and identified taxa, their taxonomic history and current status, as well as historical, phylogenetic and biogeographic information. Volume 2 contains a synopsis of the fossil record and taxonomy of important groups of mammals represented in the fossil record of Greece. The volume starts with specific chapters on laurasiatherians like insectivores and bats, moving on to the main part of the book that deals with three of the most important fossil groups in the country. The fossil record of even-toed animals is summarized with chapters on bovids, cervids, suoids, anthracotheres, hippos, giraffes, and tragulids. The fossil record of odd-toed animals is presented with special chapters on horses, tapirs, rhinos, and chalicotheres. The last part of this volume deals with meat-eating, carnivoran groups, like felids, viverrids, hyaenas, canids, bears, ailurids, mephitids and mustelids. The volume ends with a special chapter on insular endemic mammals from the various islands of Greece.

This book supplies the evolutionary and genetic framework that Charles Murray, towards the end of Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010, predicts will one day explain revolutionary change in American society. Murray's Coming Apart documents 50 years of changed college admissions, government incentives, mating and migration patterns that have wrought national divisions across indexes of marriage, industriousness, honesty, and religiosity. The framework discussed is life history evolution, a sub-discipline within evolutionary biology singly capable of explaining why violent crime, property crime, low marriage rates, father absence, early birth, low educational achievement, low income, poverty, lack of religiosity and reduced achievement striving will reliably co-occur as part of a complex. This complex augments facultatively, developmentally and evolutionarily in response to unpredictable and uncontrollable sources of mortality. The uncertain tenure of life wrought by unpredictable and uncontrollable mortality selects for a present-oriented use of bioenergetics resources recognizable as the social ills of Fishtown, Murray's archetypal working class community. In turn, the thirty years of life history literature herein reviewed confirms the biological logic of elite intermarriage and sequestration. The source of life history variation, policy implications, and demography are discussed.

This volume presents a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in symbiosis research. It covers molecular, organellar, cellular, immunologic, genetic and evolutionary aspects of symbiotic interactions in humans and other model systems. The book also highlights new approaches to interdisciplinary research and therapeutic applications. Symbiosis refers to any mutually beneficial interaction between different organisms. The symbiotic origin of cellular organelles and the exchange of genetic material between hosts and their bacterial and viral symbionts have helped shaped the current diversity of life. Recently, symbiosis has gained a new level of recognition, due to the realization that all organisms function as a holobiome and that any kind of interference with the hosts influences their symbionts and vice versa, and can have profound consequences for the survival of both. For example, in humans, the microbiome, i.e., the entirety of all the microorganisms living in association with the intestines, oral cavity, urogenital system and skin, is partially inherited during pregnancy and influences the maturation and functioning of the human immune system, protects against pathogens and regulates metabolism. Symbionts also regulate cancer development, wound healing, tissue regeneration and stem cell function. The medical applications of this new realization are vast and largely uncharted. The composition and robustness of human symbionts could make them a valuable diagnostic tool for predicting impending diseases, and the manipulation of symbionts could yield new strategies for the treatment of incurable diseases.

Now updated for its second edition, Population Genetics is the classic, accessible introduction to the concepts of population genetics. Combining traditional conceptual approaches with classical hypotheses and debates, the book equips students to understand a wide array of empirical studies that are based on the first principles of population genetics. Featuring a highly accessible introduction to coalescent theory, as well as covering the major conceptual advances in population genetics of the last two decades, the second edition now also includes end of chapter problem sets and revised coverage of recombination in the coalescent model, metapopulation extinction and recolonization, and the fixation index.

Action selection is the task of doing the right thing at the right time. It requires the assessment of available alternatives, executing those most appropriate, and resolving conflicts among competing goals and possibilities. Using advanced computational modelling, this book explores cutting-edge research into action selection in nature from a wide range of disciplines, from neuroscience to behavioural ecology, and even political science. It delivers new insights into both detailed and systems-level attributes of natural intelligence and demonstrates advances in methodological practice. Contributions from leading researchers cover issues including whether biological action selection is optimal, neural substrates for action selection in the vertebrate brain, perceptual selection in decision making, and interactions between group and individual action selection. This first integrated review of action selection in nature contains a balance of review and original research material, consolidating current knowledge into a valuable reference for researchers while illustrating potential paths for future studies.

George John Romanes (1848-94) was considered by The Times to be 'the biological investigator upon whom in England the mantle of Mr. Darwin has most conspicuously descended'. Incorporating some of Darwin's unpublished notes, this book explores the question of whether human intelligence evolved. In a stance still often considered controversial at the time of its first printing in 1888, the first half establishes a link between humans and animals, and introduces some of the most important issues of nineteenth-century evolutionary psychology: the impact of relative brain sizes of humans and primates, the origin of self-consciousness and the possible reasons behind the apparent mental stasis of what Romanes terms 'savage man'. Following the argument that one of the main factors to be considered is language, the second half focuses on philology. Romanes' earlier work, Mental Evolution in Animals (1883), is also reissued in this series.

This timely book revisits cryptic female choice in arthropods, gathering detailed contributions from around the world to address key behavioral, ecological and evolutionary questions. The reader will find a critical summary of major breakthroughs in taxon-oriented chapters that offer many new perspectives and cases to explore and in many cases unpublished data. Many groups of arthropods such as spiders, harvestmen, flies, moths, crickets, earwigs, beetles, eusocial insects, shrimp and crabs are discussed. Sexual selection is currently the focus of numerous and controversial theoretical and experimental studies. Selection in mating and post-mating patterns can be shaped by several different mechanisms, including sperm competition, extreme sexual conflict and cryptic female choice. Discrimination among males during or after copulation is called cryptic female choice because it occurs after intromission, the event that was formerly used as the definitive criterion of male reproductive success and is therefore usually difficult to detect and confirm. Because it sequentially follows intra- and intersexual interactions that occur before copulation, cryptic female choice has the power to alter or negate precopulatory sexual selection. However, though female roles in biasing male paternity after copulation have been proposed for a number of species distributed in many animal groups, cryptic female choice continues to be often underestimated. Furthermore, in recent years the concept of sexual conflict has been frequently misused, linking sexual selection by female choice irrevocably and exclusively with sexually antagonistic co-evolution, without exploring other alternatives. The book offers an essential source of information on how two fields, selective cooperation and individual sex interests, work together in the context of cryptic female choice in nature, using arthropods as model organisms. It is bound to spark valuable discussions among scientists working in evolutionary biology across the world, motivating new generations to unveil the astonishing secrets of sexual biology throughout the animal kingdom.

This book proposes a new way to think about evolution. The author carefully brings together evidence from diverse fields of science. In the process, he bridges the gaps between many different--and usually seen as conflicting--ideas to present one integrative theory named ONCE, which stands for Organic Nonoptimal Constrained Evolution. The author argues that evolution is mainly driven by the behavioral choices and persistence of organisms themselves, in a process in which Darwinian natural selection is mainly a secondary--but still crucial--evolutionary player. Within ONCE, evolution is therefore generally made of mistakes and mismatches and trial-and-error situations, and is not a process where organisms engage in an incessant, suffocating struggle in which they can't thrive if they are not optimally adapted to their habitats and the external environment. Therefore, this unifying view incorporates a more comprehensive view of the diversity and complexity of life by stressing that organisms are not merely passive evolutionary players under the rule of external factors. This insightful and well-reasoned argument is based on numerous fascinating case studies from a wide range of organisms, including bacteria, plants, insects and diverse examples from the evolution of our own species. The book has an appeal to researchers, students, teachers, and those with an interest in the history and philosophy of science, as well as to the broader public, as it brings life back into biology by emphasizing that organisms, including humans, are the key active players in evolution and thus in the future of life on this wonderful planet.

Originally published in 1995, The Antievolution Pamphlets of William Bell Riley is the fourth volume in the series, Creationism in Twentieth Century America, reissued in 2021. The volume comprises of nine antievolution pamphlets written by William Bell Riley during the interwar years. The pamphlets detail Riley’s antievolutionist ideas and activities, and the book attempts to place the work in the larger contexts of Riley’s career, as well as discussing the pamphlets included. The collection will be of especial interest to natural historians, and theologians as well as academics of philosophy, and history.

Produced here in two low-cost paperback volumes, John Bapty Oates' challenging insights into the human condition, and specifically, the REAL reasons behind the current global crises, is a must-read for any serious student of human nature, sociology or economics. Topics covered include the evolution of human consciousness; the rise of a global economy; and the many dangers and pitfalls that await us as a species if we cannot - or will not - listen with real urgency, to the lessons that life places before us. A true heavyweight amongst contemporary philosophical works.

In this investigation of orchids, first published in 1862, Darwin expands on a point made in On the Origin of Species that he felt required further explanation, namely that he believes it to be 'a universal law of nature that organic beings require an occasional cross with another individual'. Darwin explains the method by which orchids are fertilised by insects, and argues that the intricate structure of their flowers evolved to favour cross pollination because of its advantages to the species. The book is written in Darwin's usual precise and elegant style, accessible despite its intricate detail. It includes a brief explanation of botanical terms and is illustrated with 34 woodcuts.

This is the seventh volume of a ten-volume series on The Natural History of the Crustacea. Chapters in this volume synthesize our current understanding of early crustacean development from the egg through the embryonic and larval phase. The first part of this book focuses on the elemental aspects of crustacean embryonic development. The second part of the book provides an account of the larval phase of crustaceans and describes processes that influence the development from hatching to an adult-like juvenile. The third and final part of the book explores ecological interactions during the planktonic phase and how crustacean larvae manage to find food, navigate the dynamic water column, and avoid predators in a medium that offers few refuges.

Scientist Charles Darwin discretely opened the possibility of a purely animalistic origin for the human species. He repeatedly insisted that the differences between humans and others were a question of degree only. Sciences were, however, taken in the opposite direction, where these differences cannot have been generated by the natural processes of biological evolution.

In "The Animal in the Secret World of Darwin," author Michel Bergeron discuses the effects on the sciences caused by the presence of questions on humanity only answerable with religious beliefs. His investigation suggests that significant elements of perceived humanity have remained sufficiently narrowly defined to continue to agree with religious beliefs over the entire period starting with the scientific revolution centuries ago and reaching the present. Instead, he questions, could we be the simple animal who can only live on the belief not to be a simple animal?

To alleviate these biases on the sciences of life, Bergeron advocates a different synthesis between Darwinism and Lamarckism. He further asks: How can sciences pretend to a cosmology neutral in term of religious influence since all of its complex mathematical developments were made under the constraint that we can link the present directly to the Big Bang?

"A rollicking tour through humanity's evolutionary past, and von Hippel is the consummate tour guide. With equal parts wisdom, humor, authority, and charm, he shows how our past explains the present and why our well-being rests on an understanding of how our minds evolved."-Adam Alter, New York Times bestselling author of Drunk Tank Pink and Irresistible Human psychology is rife with contradictions: We work hard to achieve our goals, but happiness at our success is fleeting. We hope our friends will do well but can't help but feel jealous if they do too well. We're aghast at the thought of people we know being murdered, but are unconcerned when our armed forces kill enemies we've never met. We complain about difficult bosses but are often just as bad when we're in charge. These inconsistencies may seem irrational, but each evolved to serve a vital function in our lives. Indeed, the most fundamental aspects of our psychology were permanently shaped by the "social leap" our ancestors made from the rainforest to the savannah. In their struggle to survive on the open grasslands, our ancestors prioritized teamwork and sociality over physical prowess, creating an entirely new kind of intelligence that forever altered our place on this planet. A blend of anthropology, biology, history, and psychology with evolutionary science, The Social Leap traces our evolutionary history to show how events in our distant past continue to shape our lives today. From why we exaggerate to why we believe our own lies, the implications are far-reaching and extraordinary.

Darwin's theory of natural selection was a monumental step in our understanding of evolution, explaining how useful adaptations are preserved over generations. However, Darwin's great idea didn't - and couldn't - tell us how those adaptations arise in the first place. On its own, can random mutation really be responsible for all the creative marvels in nature? Renowned evolutionary biologist Andreas Wagner presents the missing piece of Darwin's theory. Using cutting-edge experimental technologies, he has found that adaptations are driven by a set of laws which allow nature to discover new molecules and mechanisms in a fraction of the time that random variation would take. Meticulously researched, carefully argued, and full of fascinating examples from the animal kingdom, Arrival of the Fittest signals an end to the mystery of life's rich diversity.

This book defends that the pursuit of originality constitutes one of the most important characteristics of creativity, but that originality refers, etymologically, to both origin and originary. Hence, the book is structured into two parts, dedicated, respectively, to the creative categories of origin and the creative categories of originary. Within the former are creation myths, games - the origin of all cultural activity, the dialectic chaos-order, axial civilizations - the germ of our time, and the struggle between generations - a factor of social transformation, and, within the second, creative capitalism, creative work in the context of the global economy of risk and uncertainty, and representative democracy. However, these two concepts are not isolated, but deeply interrelated, in a way that explains how creative originality builds a temporal narrative. It has been dislocated in late modernity and, with it, creativity has been broken.

In this book, Kate Distin proposes a theory of cultural evolution and shows how it can help us to understand the origin and development of human culture. Distin introduces the concept that humans share information not only in natural languages, which are spoken or signed, but also in artefactual languages like writing and musical notation, which use media that are made by humans. Languages enable humans to receive and transmit variations in cultural information and resources. In this way, they provide the mechanism for cultural evolution. The human capacity for metarepresentation - thinking about how we think - accelerates cultural evolution, because it frees cultural information from the conceptual limitations of each individual language. Distin shows how the concept of cultural evolution outlined in this book can help us to understand the complexity and diversity of human culture, relating her theory to a range of subjects including economics, linguistics, and developmental biology.

Throughout history, humans have been fascinated by their origins. The evolutionary development of the human brain has been of particular interest since our intellectual, emotional, and cultural capacities are considered to be unique among animals. This book brings together a group of eminent scientists from the fields of evolutionary biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and psychology. Their views provide a starting point for a debate based on the most recent scientific data relating to the evolutionary origins of the human brain, drawing together knowledge from sciences of the past (paleontology, archaeology) and those of the present and future (molecular neurobiology, population genetics). The result is a lively, informative, and valuable synthesis that will interest a wide range of students and researchers in these fields.

This volume is part of the definitive edition of letters written by and to Charles Darwin, the most celebrated naturalist of the nineteenth century. It is already an important source for students and scholars in many academic disciplines. Notes and appendixes put these fascinating and wide-ranging letters in context, making the letters accessible to both scholars and general readers. Darwin depended on correspondence to collect data from all over the world, and to discuss his emerging ideas with scientific colleagues, many of whom he never met in person. The letters are published chronologically: Volume 18 includes letters from 1870, as well as a supplement of more than a hundred recently discovered or redated letters from before 1870. During 1870 Darwin was making final preparations for publication of Descent of Man, as well as continuing his research on expression in humans and animals.