Description
Kinship, religion, and economy were not "natural" to humans, nor to species of apes that had to survive on the African savanna. Society from its very beginnings involved an uneasy necessity that often stood in conflict with humans' ape ancestry; these tensions only grew along with later, more complex-eventually colossal-sociocultural systems. The ape in us was not extinguished, nor obviated, by culture; indeed, our ancestry continues to place pressures on individuals and their sociocultural creations. Not just an exercise in history, this pathbreaking book dispels many myths about the beginning of society to gain new understandings of the many pressures on societies today.
Table of Contents
1: A Brief History of Primate Time on Earth; 2: The Weakness of Weak Ties; 3: Societal Protoplasm; 4: The Strength of Strong Ties; 5: The Emergence of Culture; 6: The Emergence of Human Society; 7: The Rise of Horticulture; 8: Agrarian Societies; 9: The Rise of Industrial and Post-Industrial Societies; 10: Strangers in a Strange Land
