Robin Dunbar – författare

A fascinating analysis of the evolution of religion from the internationally renowned evolutionary psychologistWhen did humans develop spiritual thought? What is religion's evolutionary purpose? And in our increasingly secular world, why has it endured?Every society in the history of humanity has lived with religion. In How Religion Evolved, evolutionary psychologist Professor Robin Dunbar tracks its origins back to what he terms the 'mystical stance' - the aspect of human psychology that predisposes us to believe in a transcendent world, and which makes an encounter with the spiritual possible. As he explores world religions and their many derivatives, as well as religions of experience practised by hunter-gatherer societies since time immemorial, Dunbar argues that this instinct is not a peculiar human quirk, an aberration on our otherwise efficient evolutionary journey. Rather, religion confers an advantage: it can benefit our individual health and wellbeing, but, more importantly, it fosters social bonding at large scale, helping hold fractious societies together. Dunbar suggests these dimensions might provide the basis for an overarching theory for why and how humans are religious, and so help unify the myriad strands that currently populate this field.Drawing on path-breaking research, clinical case studies and fieldwork from around the globe, as well as stories of charismatic cult leaders, mysterious sects and lost faiths, How Religion Evolved offers a fascinating and far-reaching analysis of this quintessentially human impulse - to believe.

Evolution is one of the most important processes in life. It not only explains the detailed history of life on earth, but its scope also extends into many aspects of our own contemporary behavior-who we are and how we got to be here, our psychology, our cultures-and greatly impacts modern advancements in medicine and conservation biology. Perhaps its most important claim for science is its ability to provide an overarching framework that integrates the many life sciences into a single unified whole. Yet, evolution-evolutionary biology in particular-has been, and continues to be, regarded with suspicion by many. Understanding how and why evolution works, and what it can tell us, is perhaps the single most important contribution to the public perception of science. This book provides an overview of the basic theory and showcases how widely its consequences reverberate across the life sciences, the social sciences and even the humanities. In this book, Robin Dunbar uses examples drawn from plant life, animals and humans to illustrate these processes. Evolutionary science has important advantages. Most of science deals with the microscopic world that we cannot see and invariably have difficulty understanding, but evolution deals with the macro-world in which we live and move. That invariably makes it much easier for the lay audience to appreciate, understand and enjoy. Evolution: What Everyone Needs to Know® takes a broad approach to evolution, dealing both with the core theory itself and its impact on different aspects of the world we live in, from the iconic debates of the nineteenth century, to viruses and superbugs, to human evolution and behavior.

'Fascinating...In essence, the number and quality of our friendships may have a bigger influence on our happiness, health and mortality risk than anything else in life save for giving up smoking' Guardian, Book of the DayFriends matter to us, and they matter more than we think. The single most surprising fact to emerge out of the medical literature over the last decade or so has been that the number and quality of the friendships we have has a bigger influence on our happiness, health and even mortality risk than anything else except giving up smoking.Robin Dunbar is the world-renowned psychologist and author who famously discovered Dunbar's number: how our capacity for friendship is limited to around 150 people. In Friends, he looks at friendship in the round, at the way different types of friendship and family relationships intersect, or at the complex of psychological and behavioural mechanisms that underpin friendships and make them possible - and just how complicated the business of making and keeping friends actually is.Mixing insights from scientific research with first person experiences and culture, Friends explores and integrates knowledge from disciplines ranging from psychology and anthropology to neuroscience and genetics in a single magical weave that allows us to peer into the incredible complexity of the social world in which we are all so deeply embedded.Working at the coalface of the subject at both research and personal levels, Robin Dunbar has written the definitive book on how and why we are friends.

Evolution is one of the most important processes in life. It not only explains the detailed history of life on earth, but its scope also extends into many aspects of our own contemporary behavior-who we are and how we got to be here, our psychology, our cultures-and greatly impacts modern advancements in medicine and conservation biology. Perhaps its most important claim for science is its ability to provide an overarching framework that integrates the many life sciences into a single unified whole. Yet, evolution-evolutionary biology in particular-has been, and continues to be, regarded with suspicion by many. Understanding how and why evolution works, and what it can tell us, is perhaps the single most important contribution to the public perception of science. This book provides an overview of the basic theory and showcases how widely its consequences reverberate across the life sciences, the social sciences and even the humanities. In this book, Robin Dunbar uses examples drawn from plant life, animals and humans to illustrate these processes. Evolutionary science has important advantages. Most of science deals with the microscopic world that we cannot see and invariably have difficulty understanding, but evolution deals with the macro-world in which we live and move. That invariably makes it much easier for the lay audience to appreciate, understand and enjoy. Evolution: What Everyone Needs to Know® takes a broad approach to evolution, dealing both with the core theory itself and its impact on different aspects of the world we live in, from the iconic debates of the nineteenth century, to viruses and superbugs, to human evolution and behavior.

To understand who we are and why we are, we need to understand both modern humans and the ancestral stages that brought us to this point. The core to that story has been the role of evolving cognition -the social brain - in mediating the changes in behaviour that we see in the archaeological record. This volume brings together two powerful approaches - the social brain hypothesis and the concept of the distributed mind. The volume compares perspectives on these two approaches from a range of disciplines, including archaeology, psychology, philosophy, sociology and the cognitive and evolutionary sciences. A particular focus is on the role that material culture plays as a scaffold for distributed cognition, and how almost three million years of artefact and tool uses provides the data for tracing key changes in areas such as language, technology, kinship, music, social networks and the politics of local, everyday interaction in small-world societies. A second focus is on how, during the course of hominin evolution, increasingly large spatially distributed communities created stresses that threatened social cohesion. This volume offers the possibility of new insights into the evolution of human cognition and social lives that will further our understanding of the relationship between mind and world.

Alcohol use has a long and ubiquitous history. The prevailing tendency to view alcohol merely as a 'social problem' or the popular notion that alcohol only serves to provide us with a 'hedonic' high, masks its importance in the social fabric of many human societies both past and present. To understand alcohol use, as a complex social practice that has been exploited by humans for thousands of years, requires cross-disciplinary insight from social/cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, historians, psychologists, primatologists, and biologists. This multi-disciplinary volume examines the broad use of alcohol in the human lineage and its wider relationship to social contexts such as feasting, sacred rituals, and social bonding. Alcohol abuse is a small part of a much more complex and social pattern of widespread alcohol use by humans. This alone should prompt us to explore the evolutionary origins of this ancient practice and the socially functional reasons for its continued popularity. The objectives of this volume are: (1) to understand how and why nonhuman primates and other animals use alcohol in the wild, and its relevance to understanding the social consumption of alcohol in humans; (2) to understand the social function of alcohol in human prehistory; (3) to understand the sociocultural significance of alcohol across human societies; and (4) to explore the social functions of alcohol consumption in contemporary society.'Alcohol in Humans' will be fascinating reading for those in the fields of biology, psychology, anthropology, archaeology, as well as those with a broader interest in addiction.

Other people and their behaviour are a subject of endless fascination for us. Our understanding of why we behave in certain ways can be greatly enhanced if we take an evolutionary perspective. Understanding the evolutionary pressures that have shaped human behaviour can give us a new insight into why we prefer a good gossip to a lengthy session of algebra, or why children are so good at learning language and so poor at sharing nicely with others.Human Evolutionary Psychology offers a comprehensive overview of all aspects of human evolutionary behaviour and psychology. Tackling everything from mate choice to marriage patterns, childcare to cultural evolution, Human Evolutionary Psychology critically assesses the value of evolutionary explanations to humans in both modern western society and traditional pre-industrial societies. The combination of broad scope and in-depth analysis makes it the ideal introduction to this exciting and rapidly expanding area of research.

When and how did the brains of our hominin ancestors become human minds? When and why did our capacity for language or art, music and dance evolve? It is the contention of this pathbreaking and provocative book that it was the need for early humans to live in ever-larger social groups, and to maintain social relations over ever-greater distances – the ability to ‘think big’ – that drove the enlargement of the human brain and the development of the human mind. This ‘social brain hypothesis’, put forward by evolutionary psychologists such as Robin Dunbar, one of the authors of this book, can be tested against archaeological and fossil evidence, as archaeologists Clive Gamble and John Gowlett show in the second part of Thinking Big. Along the way, the three authors touch on subjects as diverse and diverting as the switch from finger-tip grooming to vocal grooming or the crucial importance of making fire for the lengthening of the social day. As this remarkable book shows, it seems we still inhabit social worlds that originated deep in our evolutionary past – by the fireside, in the hunt and on the grasslands of Africa.

A wonderfully accessible, up-to-the-minute account of human evolution by 'one of the most respected evolutionary psychologists in Britain' (Guardian). Of the dozen or so hominid species once in existence, why are we the only one to have survived? What is it that sets us so firmly apart from all the other creatures with whom we share the planet? How and when did that separation come about?

We are the product of our evolutionary history and this history colours our everyday lives - from why we kiss to how religious we are. In How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Robin Dunbar explains how the distant past underpins our current behaviour, through the groundbreaking experiments that have changed the thinking of evolutionary biologists forever. He explains phenomena such as why 'Dunbar's Number' (150) is the maximum number of acquaintances you can have, why all babies are born premature and the science behind lonely hearts columns. Stimulating, provocative and highly enjoyable, this fascinating book is essential for understanding why humans behave as they do - what it is to be human.

Falling in love is one of the strangest things we can do - and one of the things that makes us uniquely human. But what happens to our brains when our eyes meet across a crowded room? Why do we kiss each other, forget our friends, seek a 'good sense of humour' in Lonely Hearts adverts and try (and fail) to be monogamous? How are our romantic relationships different from our relationships with friends, family or even God? Can science help us, or are we better off turning back to the poets?Basing his arguments on new and experimental scientific research, Robin Dunbar explores the psychology and ethology of romantic love and how our evolutionary programming still affects our behaviour. Fascinating and illuminating, witty and accessible, The Science of Love and Betrayal is essential reading for anyone who's ever wondered why we fall in love and what on earth is going on when we do.

Early Human Kinship brings together original studies from leading figures in the biological sciences, social anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics to provide a major breakthrough in the debate over human evolution and the nature of society. A major new collaboration between specialists across the range of the human sciences including evolutionary biology and psychology; social/cultural anthropology; archaeology and linguisticsProvides a ground-breaking set of original studies offering a new perspective on early human historyDebates fundamental questions about early human society: Was there a connection between the beginnings of language and the beginnings of organized 'kinship and marriage'? How far did evolutionary selection favor gender and generation as principles for regulating social relations?Sponsored by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in conjunction with the British Academy

Early Human Kinship brings together original studies from leading figures in the biological sciences, social anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics to provide a major breakthrough in the debate over human evolution and the nature of society. A major new collaboration between specialists across the range of the human sciences including evolutionary biology and psychology; social/cultural anthropology; archaeology and linguisticsProvides a ground-breaking set of original studies offering a new perspective on early human historyDebates fundamental questions about early human society: Was there a connection between the beginnings of language and the beginnings of organized 'kinship and marriage'? How far did evolutionary selection favor gender and generation as principles for regulating social relations?Sponsored by the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland in conjunction with the British Academy

'A remarkable and important book . . . a highly accessible, timely and invaluable guide to anybody working in groups.' Prof Paul Gilbert OBE___________________________________________________How many people does the ideal team contain? How do groups bond, earn trust and forge shared identities? How can leaders build environments adaptable enough to respond to shocks and still enable people to thrive together? How can you feel close to people if your only point of contact is a phone or a computer?In The Social Brain leading experts from the worlds of evolutionary psychology and business management come together to offer a primer on great team working. They explain what size groups work and how to shape them according to the nature of the task at hand. They offer practical hints on how to diffuse tensions and encourage cooperation. And they demonstrate the vital importance of balancing unity and the need for different views and outlooks. By explaining precisely how the 'social brain' works, they show how human groups function and how to create great, high-performing teams._____________________________________'This wonderful book reminds us that businesses are also biological and social . . . It could not be more timely, wise and useful.' Margaret Heffernan, author of Wilful Blindness'Buy it for yourself and your colleagues. Essential reading.' Mark Earls, author of HERD

Evolutionary Psychology: A Beginner’s Guide is a uniquely accessible yet comprehensive guide to the study of the effects of evolutionary theory on human behaviour. Written specifically for the general reader, and for entry-level students, it covers all the most important elements of this interdisciplinary subject, from the role of evolution in our selection of partner, to the influence of genetics on parenting. The book draws widely on examples, case studies and background facts to convey a substantial amount of information, and is authored by the UK’s leading experts in the field, from the only dedicated research and teaching institute.

Die Entdeckung der Gemeinsamkeit Dieses bemerkenswerte Buch, das die Evolution und die Archäologie des menschlichen Sozialverhaltens zusammenführt, spannt den Bogen von den sozialen Gruppen der Steinzeit bis zu den modernen digitalen Netzwerken – und zeigt, dass wir heute in sozialen Welten leben, die sich tief in unserer evolutionären Vergangenheit entwickelt haben.Sie werden in diesem Jahr kein wichtigeres Buch lesen. Es könnte uns ein bisschen weiser in unserer Selbsteinschätzung machen. MinervaEin wunderbares Kompendium von Geschichte, Theorien und faszinierenden Experimenten, das Sie durchweg fesseln wird. BBC FocusIn einem Stil geschrieben, der in so bewundernswerter Weise wissenschaftliches Fachvokabular und Soziologenjargon vermeidet, dass man nicht mehr als ein normales menschliches Gehirn braucht, um es zu lesen und zu verstehen … eine sehr wertvolle Zusammenfassung unseres gegenwärtigenWissens über die Evolution des Menschen und den möglichen Ursprung und die Entwicklung [solcher] menschlicher Eigenschaften und Fähigkeiten … Evolution, Denken, Kultur ist wie der Urknall: wahrscheinlich noch nicht die ganze Antwort, aber zweifellos schon die Erklärung einer großen Zahl beobachtbarer Phänomene, und für die Debatte und Weiterentwicklung unserer Vorstellungen über die Ursprünge und die Evolution der menschlichen Kognition wird es auf Jahrzehnte hinaus als führendes Modell dienen. Society of Antiquaries NewsletterEin dramatischer Schlag gegen den “Steine und Knochen”-Ansatz der Archäologie. New Scientist Zugleich ein Triumph der Zusammenarbeit und eine packende Detektivgeschichte. New Statesman _____Wann und wie entwickelte sich das Gehirn unserer frühen Vorfahren zu einem menschlichen Gehirn? Wann und wie entstand in der Evolution unsere Fähigkeit, zu sprechen und Kunstwerke zu schaffen, zu musizieren und zu tanzen? Die Größe der sozialen Gruppen, in denen Menschen heute leben – Angehörige, Freunde, Bekannte –, beträgt ungefähr 150 Personen. Diese „Dunbar-Zahl“ liegt etwa dreifach höher als bei Menschenaffen und unseren ältesten Vorfahren. Wie die Autoren dieses bahnbrechenden Buches darlegen, waren die frühen Menschen im Kampf ums Überleben gezwungen, sich zu immer größeren Gruppen zusammenzuschließen und zwischenmenschliche Beziehungen über weite Distanzen aufrechtzuerhalten. Sie mussten „im Großen denken“, und dies wiederum trieb sowohl das Wachstum des menschlichen Gehirns als auch die Entstehung des menschlichen Geistes voran. Aus dem gegenseitigen Kraulen der Menschenaffen erwuchs die für Menschen kennzeichnende sprachliche Zuwendung. Musik und Tanz verstärkten die Bindungen zwischen ihnen. Und die Beherrschung des Feuers verlängerte den Tag für zwischenmenschliche Aktivitäten. Heute beherrschen soziale Netzwerke die Welt. Doch erstaunlicherweise entspricht die Zahl unserer Facebook- oder Twitter-Kontakte im Mittel der Dunbar-Zahl. Offenbar leben wir immer noch in einer sozialen Welt, die ihre Wurzeln tief in unserer Evolutionsvergangenheit hat – am Lagerfeuer, auf der Jagd und in den Graslandschaften Afrikas.