Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution
University Of Chicago Press, (Jun 1, 2006)Abstract
Humans are a striking anomaly in the natural world. While we are similar to
other mammals in many ways, our behavior sets us apart. Our unparalleled
ability to adapt has allowed us to occupy virtually every habitat on earth
using an incredible variety of tools and subsistence techniques. Our societies
are larger, more complex, and more cooperative than any other mammal's. In
this stunning exploration of human adaptation, Peter J. Richerson and Robert
Boyd argue that only a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution can explain
these unique characteristics.
\_Not by Genes Alone\_ offers a radical interpretation of human evolution,
arguing that our ecological dominance and our singular social systems stem
from a psychology uniquely adapted to create complex culture. Richerson and
Boyd illustrate here that culture is neither superorganic nor the handmaiden
of the genes. Rather, it is essential to human adaptation, as much a part of
human biology as bipedal locomotion. Drawing on work in the fields of
anthropology, political science, sociology, and economics—and building their
case with such fascinating examples as kayaks, corporations, clever knots, and
yams that require twelve men to carry them—Richerson and Boyd convincingly
demonstrate that culture and biology are inextricably linked, and they show us
how to think about their interaction in a way that yields a richer
understanding of human nature.
In abandoning the nature-versus-nurture debate as fundamentally misconceived,
\_Not by Genes Alone\_ is a truly original and groundbreaking theory of the role
of culture in evolution and a book to be reckoned with for generations to
come.
” I continue to be surprised by the number of educated people (many of them
biologists) who think that offering explanations for human behavior in terms
of culture somehow disproves the suggestion that human behavior can be
explained in Darwinian evolutionary terms. Fortunately, we now have a book to
which they may be directed for enlightenment . . . . It is a book full of good
sense and the kinds of intellectual rigor and clarity of writing that we have
come to expect from the Boyd/Richerson stable.”—Robin Dunbar, \_Nature
\_ ” \_Not by Genes Alone\_ is a valuable and very readable synthesis of a still
embryonic but very important subject straddling the sciences and
humanities.”—E. O. Wilson, Harvard University