Primate perspectives on human evolution

Abstract

The work undertaken for this thesis addressed the issue of the relevance of study of living primates for inference concerning the evolution of social behaviour in extinct hominids. A series of studies are reported in which hypotheses concerning the evolution of human behavioural traits are evaluated using data and theory derived from primate studies.

These studies were as follows:

1) a re-evaluation of Deacon's (1988s,b) model of human brain evolution and specification of a test of the model using archaeological data from the Lower Palaeolithic;

2) a re-analysis of Dunbar's (1992) study of primate brain-social system relationships, using new data compilations and alternative multivariate statistical methodology;

3) an experiment in simulation modelling of regional patterns of information exchange using primate dispersal patterns as a guide, and application of the model to interpretation of Acheulian biface morphology;

4) specification of a new primate model of the origins and function of human language, and analysis of socioecological correlates of analogous behaviours in other living primates;

5) pilot experimentation using a new method of evaluating claims for inbuilt human reasoning biases in the Wason selection task (Cosmides 1989), and using a personality test which differentiates individual subjects by their `Machiavellianism' (following work in primate studies on the `Machiavellian' hypothesis of primate brain evolution [Byrne and Whiten 1988]).

The introduction and the concluding discussion describe the relevance of these studies to the new paradigm of `evolutionary psychology'.

More information

Identifiers

Catalogue record

Export record

ASCII CitationAtomBibTeXData Cite XMLDublin CoreDublin CoreEP3 XMLEndNoteHTML CitationHTML CitationHTML ListJSONMETSMODSMPEG-21 DIDLOpenURL ContextObjectOpenURL ContextObject in SpanRDF+N-TriplesRDF+N3RDF+XMLRIOXX2 XMLReferReference ManagerSimple Metadata