Do you believe it or not

books:

	• Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding (Belknap Press) Sarah Blaffer Hrdy Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Why us and not them?

This book should be read by anyone with an interest in human evolution but especially by those with an interest in human uniqueness. Dr. Hrdy writes beautifully, is vigorous in her attention to empirical evidence, but she is also willing to speculate about the conditions that fostered uniquely human traits. Among the most obvious of these traits are our extended lifespans, prolonged childhoods, big brains, perspective taking (mind reading) or intersubjectivity, language use, cumulative culture, mutual understanding, norm formation and enforcement, altruistic punishment, and moral judgment. The list could of course go on but what concerns Professor Hrdy more than these individual traits is describing the conditions or preconditions fostering these co-evolving traits. As she notes, the most common explanation for our pro-social traits is group competition but, as she argues, such competition is common among other primates, especially the Great Apes, and the question becomes "why us and not them?" She does not discount completely the role of group competition but argues that by far the most important reason that humans display their uniquely pro-social suite of traits is that "novel [child] rearing conditions among a line of early hominins meant that youngsters grew up depending on a wider range of caretakers than just their mothers, and this dependence produced selection pressures that favored individuals who were better able at decoding the mental states of others, and figuring out who would better help and who would hurt" (p 66).Hrdy argues that cooperation more than competition accounts for our unique traits, although the two are hardly incompatible.

Dr Hrdy speculates that within the genus Homo, Homo erectus may well have exhibited cooperative breeding--that is, groupmates or alloparents other than mothers tended to children, including nonkin--and that they may have been emotionally modern. By 1.8 million years ago Homo erectus was almost as large and as large brained as Homo sapiens, and, although male australopithecines were twice as large as females, males and females among Homo erectus were only slightly more dimorphic than Homo sapiens. Whatever the precise date for the emergence of cooperative breeding within our line, humans, unlike any of the Great Apes, have cooperative breeding and this fact Dr Hrdy maintains is the precondition that made the remarkable human suite of traits possible.

In these brief comments I have stressed the speculative features of Dr. Hrdy's argument because they are both the most novel and interesting elements. Let me stress in conclusion, however, that the author attends scrupulously to data and evidence, so even if one is less convinced than I am about the theoretical claims she makes, the book will instruct the reader on every page, especially if it is read slowly.

Brad Lowell Stone

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important ideas

This is a very important piece of work that expands and clarifies Hrdys line of reasoning in her first book, Mother Nature. She presents such a huge amount of research into the socioemotional and evolutionary underpinnings of empathy and nurturing behavior that it is sometimes a little hard to view the forest behind all the trees. Although this is definitely not a book geared towards the novice it is well written and a must-read for everyone working in the field of anthropology. Btw, the photos are gems in their own right.

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Do you believe it or not

Very interesting ideas regarding the evolutionary process are provided. However, arguments are sometimes lousy; the opposite could also be true. We have to recognize that full proof cannot be given in this field of science, but for my European way of looking to science, somewhat more doubt should be shown by the author. She wants - in my opinion - too much to convince the reader and so hurts the scientific character of her statements.

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You Must

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is required reading for any human who takes being human seriously.

If you haven't read Dr. Hrdy, you don't completely know who, and what, you are. Other authors provide other pieces. No one else provides what Dr. Hrdy provides.

Simply, Hrdy is as essential as food, water, oxygen.

reviews: page 1, 2

Somewhere in Africa, more than a million years ago, a line of apes began to rear their young differently than their Great Ape ancestors. From this new form of care came new ways of engaging and understanding each other. How such singular human capacities evolved, and how they have kept us alive for thousands of generations, is the mystery revealed in this bold and wide-ranging new vision of human emotional evolution.

Mothers and Others finds the key in the primatologically unique length of human childhood. If the young were to survive in a world of scarce food, they needed to be cared for, not only by their mothers but also by siblings, aunts, fathers, friends?and, with any luck, grandmothers. Out of this complicated and contingent form of childrearing, Sarah Hrdy argues, came the human capacity for understanding others. Mothers and others teach us who will care, and who will not.

From its opening vision of ?apes on a plane?; to descriptions of baby care among marmosets, chimpanzees, wolves, and lions; to explanations about why men in hunter-gatherer societies hunt together, Mothers and Others is compellingly readable. But it is also an intricately knit argument that ever since the Pleistocene, it has taken a village to raise children?and how that gave our ancient ancestors the first push on the path toward becoming emotionally modern human beings.

(20090511)

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