内容简介
假如穿越到数百万年前，你会如何度过你“猿生”的一天？
数十年间，大量关于人类进化的新证据和新观点，使科学家们能够拼凑出对几千年甚至几百万年前发生的事情的更详细的理解。人们现在对祖先曾面临的问题、找到的解决方案以及他们所做的利弊权衡有了更多了解。他们的经历的戏剧性造就了我们今天的人类：一种依赖复杂文化的动物。
人类这个物种独特的文化能力在几百万年前就开始产生了，但它只是在过去几十万年才真正突飞猛进。这种能力使我们的祖先能够在极端气候的时期生存下来，并抚养他们艰难生存下来的孩子。了解这一点，可以帮助我们理解我们今天经历的文化变化和多样性。
这本书梳理了700万年来的人类发展历程，提出相对于基因，行为选择才是塑造多样化、创新和复杂社会的真正因素。结合前沿的基因组学、气候学、人类学和历史学研究，两位加州大学戴维斯分校进化生物学家展示了气候变化而造成的严酷环境可能迫使我们的祖先以家庭为单位群居。由社群中的众人合力抚养，儿童得以获取复合知识、专业技能，更善于使用和传达文化信息的个人幸存的可能性更大，随着代代相传，文化变得越来越重要。
这本书强调，在今天，文化日渐全球化和高智商化，将帮助我们跨过更大的进化障碍。
作者简介
莱斯利·纽森（Lesley Newson）：进化生物学家,彼得·理查森（Peter Richerson）：生物学家，美国加利福尼亚大学戴维斯分校环境科学学院教授彼得·理查森（Peter J.Richerson）：生物学家，美国加利福尼亚大学戴维斯分校环境科学与政策系荣誉教授。20世纪70年代以来，他逐渐成为文化进化论的奠基人之一。该理论研究了基因和文化如何共同进化，对双重继承理论的发展产生了巨大的影响。
Content introduction
If you were to travel millions of years in time, how would you spend your "ape" day?
Over the decades, a flood of new evidence and new perspectives on human evolution has allowed scientists to piece together a more detailed understanding of what happened thousands or even millions of years ago. People now know more about the problems their ancestors faced, the solutions they found, and the trade-offs they made. The drama of their experiences has made us what we are today: an animal dependent on a complex culture.
Our species' unique cultural capacity began millions of years ago, but it's only in the last few hundred thousand years that it's really developed in leaps and bounds. This ability allowed our ancestors to survive periods of extreme climate and raise their children who had struggled to survive. Understanding this can help us understand the cultural change and diversity we experience today.
Combing through seven million years of human development, the book argues that behavioral choices, more than genes, are the real factors shaping diverse, innovative, and complex societies. Combining cutting-edge research in genomics, climatology, anthropology, and history, two UC Davis evolutionary biologists show how harsh conditions caused by climate change may have forced our ancestors to live in family groups. When raised by people in a community, children acquire complex knowledge, specialized skills, and individuals who are better at using and communicating cultural information are more likely to survive. Culture becomes more important as it is passed from generation to generation.
The book emphasizes that today's increasingly global and intelligent cultures will help us overcome even greater evolutionary barriers.
About the author
Lesley Newson (Evolutionary biologist), Peter Richerson (biologist), University of California, Davis School of Environmental Sciences Professor Peter J.Richerson: Biologist, Professor emeritus, Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis. Since the 1970s, he has gradually become one of the founders of cultural evolution. The theory, which examines how genes and culture co-evolved, had a huge influence on the development of the theory of double inheritance.
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