Human by Nature? -- Before Humans: Looking Back in Evolutionary Time -- Why Humans Became the Most Emotional Animals on Earth? -- Why and How Did the Human Family Evolve? -- Interpersonal Skills for Species Survival -- The Elaboration of Humans' Inherited Nature -- The Evolved Cognitive Complex and Human Nature -- The Evolved Emotions Complex and Human Nature -- The Evolved Psychology Complex and Human Nature -- The Evolved Interaction Complex and Human Nature -- The Evolved Community Complex and Human Nature -- Human Nature and The Evolution of Mega Societies: Implication for Species and Personal Survival on Planet Earth.
Summary:
"This new book by the distinguished sociological theorist Jonathan H. Turner combines sociology, evolutionary biology, cladistic analysis from biology, and comparative neuroanatomy to examine human nature, as it was inherited from the common ancestors that humans shared with present-day great apes. This inherited legacy was altered by selection pressures on these ancestors of humans-termed hominins for being bipedal-to get better organized than extant great apes as they were forced from the forest canopies to open country terrestrial habitats. The effects of these selection pressures made humans' hominin ancestors more social and group oriented by increasing their emotional capacities. This, in turn, enabled further selection for a larger brain, articulated speech, and culture along the human line. Turner elaborates human nature as a series of overlapping complexes that are the outcome of the inherited legacy of great apes being fed through the transforming effects of a larger brain, speech, and culture. These complexes, he shows, can be understood as the cognitive complex, the psychological complex, the emotions complex, the interaction complex, and the community complex"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.