How Many Friends Does One Person Need?: Dunbars Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks by Prof. Robin Dunbar

Author:Prof. Robin Dunbar [Prof Robin Dunbar]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Human behavior, Life Sciences, Psychology, Biology, Science, Evolution, General, Anthropology, Interpersonal Relations, Social Psychology, Social Science
ISBN: 9780674057166
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2010-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

How many friends does one person need?

We know from the archaeological evidence that hunting rates must have been high, for early humans living in the Ukraine fifteen thousand to twenty thousand years ago made extensive use of mammoth bones for building shelters. In some cases, bones were simply used to weigh down the edges of tents. But at Mezhirich in what is now Ukraine, four huts were built with walls and roof supports made out of the leg bones, lower jaws, skulls and tusks of many mammoths. Just these four huts are estimated to contain bones from as many as ninety-five different individuals.

So the lesson for us today is that while the mammoths could easily absorb the hunting pressure put on them by humans when they were abundant, their ability to do so changed abruptly once climate change caused a dramatic drop in their numbers. At that point, even very modest hunting pressure was enough to tip them over the edge of extinction. It remains an object lesson for us today, with the renewed threat of further climate warming putting increasing numbers of rare species at risk.

Gaelically speaking

Languages go extinct just like animals and plants, and we are currently witnessing a major period of language extinctions. Although there are thought to be just under seven thousand languages currently spoken in the world, no fewer than 550 of these are spoken by fewer than a hundred (mostly rather elderly) people and will certainly be extinct within the next decade or two. Perhaps as many as half of all the rest will be extinct within the next century. One of those could well be Gaelic, the language of 152

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