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Built for Speed: Pleistocene Climate Variation and the Origin of Human Culture

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Book cover Perspectives in Ethology

Part of the book series: Perspectives in Ethology ((PEIE,volume 13))

Abstract

The evolution of humans is a major event in the Earth’s biotic history. Never before has a single species of organism so dominated the planet. Hunting and gathering people penetrated to nearly every habitable scrap of the Earth’s surface by the end of the Pleistocene. Beginning about 10,000 years ago, food plant production, and its evolutionary sequelae, have made us a geochemical and geophysical force to be reckoned with. Most accounts of human origins take this ecological dominance as a sign of a qualitatively new and superior form of adaptation and ask, what evolutionary breakthrough led to the unique human adaptive complex—tool making, language, complex social organization, and other aspects of culture.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, California, USA, 95616

    Peter J. Richerson

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA, 90024

    Robert Boyd

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  1. Peter J. Richerson
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  1. University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara-Jalisco, Mexico

    François Tonneau

  2. Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA

    Nicholas S. Thompson

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Richerson, P.J., Boyd, R. (2000). Built for Speed: Pleistocene Climate Variation and the Origin of Human Culture. In: Tonneau, F., Thompson, N.S. (eds) Perspectives in Ethology. Perspectives in Ethology, vol 13. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-1221-9_1

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