Apes and Human Evolution / / Russell H. Tuttle.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE Chemistry, Materials Sc, Biol, Geosc 2014
• VerfasserIn: Tuttle, Russell H.,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2014]; ©2014
• Year of Publication: 2014
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (1088 p.) :; 63 color illustrations, 72 halftones, 54 line illustrations, 6 maps, 22 tables

In this masterwork, Russell H. Tuttle synthesizes a vast research literature in primate evolution and behavior to explain how apes and humans evolved in relation to one another, and why humans became a bipedal, tool-making, culture-inventing species distinct from other hominoids. Along the way, he refutes the theory that men are essentially killer apes--sophisticated but instinctively aggressive, destructive beings. Situating humans in a broad context, Tuttle musters evidence from morphology and recent fossil discoveries to reveal what early primates ate, where they slept, how they learned to walk upright, how brain and hand anatomy evolved simultaneously, and what else happened evolutionarily to cause humans to diverge from their closest relatives. Despite our genomic similarities with bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas, humans are unique among primates in occupying a symbolic niche of values and beliefs based on symbolically mediated cognitive processes. Although apes exhibit behaviors that strongly suggest they can think, salient elements of human culture--speech, mating proscriptions, kinship structures, and moral codes--are symbolic systems that are not manifest among apes. This encylopedic volume is both a milestone in primatological research and a critique of what is known and yet to be discovered about human and ape potential.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- 1 Mongrel Models and Seductive Scenarios of Human Evolution -- Part I. Terminology, Morphology, Genes, and Lots of Fossils -- 2. Apes in Space -- 3. Apes in Time -- 4 Taproot and Branches of Our Family Tree -- Part II. Positional and Subsistence Behaviors -- 5 Apes in Motion -- 6 Several Ways to Achieve Erection -- 7 Hungry and Sleepy Apes -- 8 Hunting Apes and Mutualism -- Part III. Hands, Tools, Brains, and Cognition -- 9. Handy Apes -- 10 Mental Apes -- Part IV. Sociality and Communication -- 11 Social, Antisocial, and Sexual Apes -- 12 Communicative Apes -- Part V. What makes us human? -- 13 Language, Culture, Ideology, Spirituality, and Morality -- Notes -- References -- Illustration Credits -- Index