Thinking Big by Robin Dunbar

Author:Robin Dunbar
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Summary

In this chapter we have explored some of the intangibles of human evolution, community size and social structure, and also examined the tangibles of fossil skulls and stone tools. The social brain adds a perspective on the former that cannot be garnered directly from the hard evidence of bone and stone. But you will also see that we have not yet opened the full box of tricks. At this stage our investigation of the deep-ancestry of our social lives has been largely comparative, drawing on studies among living primates and extrapolating them to fossils. We have not mentioned theory of mind, degrees of intentionality or the amplification of social life using those core resources of materials and senses (see Figure 3.2). There is a good reason for that. Although brain sizes in the earliest hominins exceeded the ape/Ardi threshold of 400 cc during the timeframes of this chapter, they were still small-brained hominins. Their social lives were more complicated than those below the 400 cc threshold. But by comparison with what came later, the journey had only just begun. What we have seen are the consequences of bipedalism, the imperatives of defence against predators, the impact on diet of gut reduction and the experiments with social learning as applied to making and using things. With this platform in place we can now turn to the evidence for three pivotal changes that lengthened the social day, transformed grooming and ushered in changes in technology.

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