Book description

The human species has long been considered unique as upright, bipedal creatures endowed with language, the ability to use tools, to think and to introspect. We now know that other creatures may be more or less capable of similar behaviour, and that these human capacities in many cases have long evolutionary trajectories. Our information about such matters comes from a diverse range of disciplines, including experimental psychology, neuropsychology, primatology, ethology, archaeology, palaeontology, comparative linguistics and molecular biology. This book attempts to integrate across a wide range of disciplines an evolutionary view of human psychology, with particular reference to language, praxis and aesthetics. There are chapters on: evolution from the appearance of life to the earliest mammals; the appearance of primates, hominids and the advent of bipedalism; a detailed account of the various species of Homo; the morphology and origin of modern H. sapiens sapiens as seen from the archaeological/palaeontological and molecular-biological perspectives; the origins of art and an aesthetic sense; the nature and realization of language, the prehistory and neuropsychology of speech, and evidence for speech and/or language in our hominid ancestors; tool use and praxis and its possible relation to language; encephalization and the growth of the brain; and intelligence, social intelligence, consciousness and self-awareness.

About the Author

John Bradshaw is a Professor in the School of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine (SPPPM), a school of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Microbiology at Monash University.

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