Mind the Gap

1. Language, Thought & Communication

   1. Language, Lies and Lipstick: A Speculative Reconstruction of the African Middle Stone Age “Human Revolution”

      • Chris Knight

      Pages 299-313

   2. Brain and Behaviour in Primate Evolution

      • R. I. M. Dunbar

      Pages 315-330

   3. The Gap is Social: Human Shared Intentionality and Culture

      • Michael Tomasello, Henrike Moll

      Pages 331-349

   4. The Evolution and Development of Human Social Cognition

      • David F. Bjorklund, Kayla Causey, Virginia Periss

      Pages 351-371

   5. Deceit and Self-Deception

      • Robert Trivers

      Pages 373-393

   6. Human Universals and Primate Symplesiomorphies: Establishing the Lemur Baseline

      • Claudia Fichtel, Peter M. Kappeler

      Pages 395-426

2. Innovation & Culture

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 428-428

      PDF

   2. Ape Behavior and the Origins of Human Culture

      • Andrew Whiten

      Pages 429-450

   3. The Coevolution of Genes, Innovation, and Culture in Human Evolution

      • Richard McElreath

      Pages 451-474

3. Conclusions

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 476-476

      PDF

   2. Mind the Gap: Cooperative Breeding and the Evolution of Our Unique Features

      • Carel P. van Schaik, Judith M. Burkart

      Pages 477-496

4. Back Matter

   Pages 497-503

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This volume features a collection of essays by primatologists, anthropologists, biologists, and psychologists who offer some answers to the question of what makes us human, i. e. , what is the nature and width of the gap that separates us from other primates? The chapters of this volume summarize the latest research on core aspects of behavioral and cognitive traits that make humans such unusual animals. All contributors adopt an explicitly comparative approach, which is based on the premise that comparative studies of our closest biological relatives, the nonhuman primates, provide the logical foundation for identifying human univ- sals as well as evidence for evolutionary continuity in our social behavior. Each of the chapters in this volume provides comparative analyses of relevant data from primates and humans, or pairs of chapters examine the same topic from a human or primatological perspective, respectively. Together, they cover six broad topics that are relevant to identifying potential human behavioral universals. Family and social organization. Predation pressure is thought to be the main force favoring group-living in primates, but there is great diversity in the size and structure of social groups across the primate order. Research on the behavioral ecology of primates and other animals has revealed that the distribution of males and females in space and time can be explained by sex-speci?c adaptations that are sensitive to factors that limit their ?tness: access to resources for females and access to potential mates for males.

• Evolution
• behavior
• coevolution
• culture
• human behaviour
• primate behaviour
• social behaviour

From the reviews:

 “This edited, 22-chapter volume organizes contributions by experts from a wide range of disciplines … to address the origins and evolution of human universals--specifically, those behavioral and cognitive features that make humans a distinct species from other primates. … In looking for evidence of both convergence and common descent in specific traits, as is common in comparative primatology, contributors make a very strong effort to evaluate the available evidence for evolutionary continuity in human social behavior. … Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty.” (R. A. Delgado Jr., Choice, Vol. 47 (11), August, 2010)

“Mind the Gap, Tracing the Origins of Human Universals … a collection of contributions dealing with the issue of human uniqueness from a multidisciplinary perspective. … Mind the Gap brings together most of the ‘hot’ topics in primatology, along with interesting contributions from cultural anthropology, and, notably, draws our attention to two critical and frequently omitted aspects of comparative research, namely the importance of studying species that are evolutionarily distant from humans, and not only the great apes, and the need for more cross-cultural research.” (Elsa Addessi, Metascience, Vol. 20, 2011)

• Abt. Soziobiologie, Deutsches Primatenzentrum, Göttingen, Germany

  Peter M. Kappeler

• Dept. Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, U.S.A.

  Joan Silk

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