The Hunting Apes : Meat Eating and the Origins of Human Behavior

什麼讓人類獨特？是什麼使我們成為今天居住在地球上最成功的動物物種？大多數科學家都認為，我們成功的關鍵在於我們大腦的異常龐大。我們的大腦為我們提供了卓越的思維能力，並帶來了人類的其他鮮明特徵，包括先進的溝通、工具使用和兩條腿走路。還是反過來呢？早期人類面臨的挑戰是否將物種推向溝通、工具使用和行走，並且這樣將演化引擎推向大腦？在這本挑釁性的書中，Craig Stanford為這個令人困惑的問題提出了一個有趣的突破性科學觀察。根據斯坦福的說法，人類獨特的是肉。或者，相反，渴望肉食、吃肉、狩獵肉、分享肉。

根據對黑猩猩和其他類人猿，我們現在已經滅絕的人類祖先以及現有狩獵和收集社團的行為的新見解，斯坦福大學展示了肉類在這些社會中發揮的顯著作用。也許是因為它提供了高度濃縮的蛋白質來源 - 對於大腦的發育和健康至關重要 - 肉類被包括人類在內的許多靈長類動物所渴望。這種渴望賦予了肉類真正的力量 - 使男性能夠圍繞狩獵形成狩獵派對和組織整個文化的力量。它賦予了男性在這些文化中操縱和控製女性的權力。Stanford大學認為，在過去的20萬年裡，成功狩獵和特別是共享肉類所需的技能和所需的技能促使人類大腦的規模激增。然後，他將注意力轉向靈肉和人類社會中肉類共享的方式，以爭辯說這一重要活動對今天仍然感受到的基本社會結構產生了深遠影響。

What makes humans unique? What makes us the most successful animal species inhabiting the Earth today? Most scientists agree that the key to our success is the unusually large size of our brains. Our large brains gave us our exceptional thinking capacity and led to humans' other distinctive characteristics, including advanced communication, tool use, and walking on two legs. Or was it the other way around? Did the challenges faced by early humans push the species toward communication, tool use, and walking and, in doing so, drive the evolutionary engine toward a large brain? In this provocative new book, Craig Stanford presents an intriguing alternative to this puzzling question--an alternative grounded in recent, groundbreaking scientific observation. According to Stanford, what made humans unique was meat. Or, rather, the desire for meat, the eating of meat, the hunting of meat, and the sharing of meat.

Based on new insights into the behavior of chimps and other great apes, our now extinct human ancestors, and existing hunting and gathering societies, Stanford shows the remarkable role that meat has played in these societies. Perhaps because it provides a highly concentrated source of protein--essential for the development and health of the brain--meat is craved by many primates, including humans. This craving has given meat genuine power--the power to cause males to form hunting parties and organize entire cultures around hunting. And it has given men the power to manipulate and control women in these cultures. Stanford argues that the skills developed and required for successful hunting and especially the sharing of meat spurred the explosion of human brain size over the past 200,000 years. He then turns his attention to the ways meat is shared within primate and human societies to argue that this all-important activity has had profound effects on basic social structures that are still felt today.

Sure to spark a lively debate, Stanford's argument takes the form of an extended essay on human origins. The book's small format, helpful illustrations, and moderate tone will appeal to all readers interested in those fundamental questions about what makes us human.

 Craig Stanford (Autor)

Publisher:Princeton University Press 

ISBN:    978-0691088884 

 原價   US 16.95 台幣價 NT$:680