Thinking Big: How the Evolution of Social Life Shaped the Human Mind

by Clive Gamble, Robin I.M. Dunbar, John Gowlett

A closer look at genealogy, incorporating how biological, anthropological, and technical factors can influence human lives

We are at a pivotal moment in understanding our remote ancestry and its implications for how we live today. The barriers to what we can know about our distant relatives have been falling as a result of scientific advance, such as decoding the genomes of humans and Neanderthals, and bringing together different perspectives to answer common questions. These collaborations have brought new knowledge and suggested fresh concepts to examine. The results have shaken the old certainties.The results are profound; not just for the study of the past but for appreciating why we conduct our social lives in ways, and at scales, that are familiar to all of us. But such basic familiarity raises a dilemma. When surrounded by the myriad technical and cultural innovations that support our global, urbanized lifestyles we can lose sight of the small social worlds we actually inhabit and that can be traced deep into our ancestry. So why do we need art, religion, music, kinship, myths, and all the other facets of our over-active imaginations if the reality of our effective social worlds is set by a limit of some one hundred and fifty partners (Dunbar’s number) made of family, friends, and useful acquaintances? How could such a social community lead to a city the size of London or a country as large as China? Do we really carry our hominin past into our human present? It is these small worlds, and the link they allow to the study of the past that forms the central point in this book.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Science, Evolution, Biology, Anthropology, History

266 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 17, 2014

Reviews

[Marc Lamot · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is the result of a major research project launched in Great Britain in 2002, and which was richly funded. The central research question was: “when exactly did the human brain become modern, and what exactly drove the evolutionary transition from humanoids to humans”. The researchers wanted to correct or at least adjust the fog in which the archaeological research had ended up. Because with every discovery of a humanoid fossil it turned out to be necessary to adjust the family tree of the human family, almost haphazardly. So there was a need for a more comprehensive theory.

This project certainly is meritorious. But there is a clear but. The researchers went out of their way to show that human evolution can be explained by looking almost exclusively to the social domain. They took the "social brain hypothesis" as a starting point: our human functioning is mainly driven by the social interaction with fellow humans. The ever larger and more complex group of humanoids and humans evoked new and more far-reaching mental processes that help explain the growth of the brain content of human species. In short: the ability to deal with larger and more complex social networks is the key to understanding human evolution.

Honestly: the research results are not entirely convincing. There is no doubt that social interaction plays an important role in human evolution; but to declare that this is the most important explanation is yet another example of scientific reductionism, not sustained by clear evidence, only by several hypotheses. More on that in my History profile on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Sense of History]

It’s the social, stupid!
A lot of scientific discussions can be reduced to the question of which came first: the chicken or the egg? This book also reflects such an issue, more specifically about human evolution. The transition from hominids to modern humans was accompanied by an increase in the size of the brain, especially the neocortex. And then of course the question is whether that growth came first, or whether it was triggered by external factors. It seems obvious to attribute that spectacular increase (from less than 400cc to over 1200cc) to environmental factors: the predecessors of modern humans had to constantly adapt to new challenges, partly because they spread geographically, but also due to changing climatic conditions and the accessibility of food.

But the authors of this work focus on a completely different phenomenon. They follow the "social brain hypothesis". This states that the human brain primarily adapted itself to the size and intensity of social contacts of the different human species. They depart from the famous Dunbar number (not coincidentally Robin Dunbar is one of the authors), the observation that people today have about 150 contacts in their direct network, which is apparently a kind of maximum that our brain can process. In view of their research question, the authors of this book look at the much smaller Dunbar number for anthropoid apes and developed a diagram in which they plot the subsequent predecessors of modern humans on a graph line.

They then illustrate how this graph explains the different steps in human development. Of course they use the data from archaeological research, but unlike archaeologists, who limit themselves to material finds and what can be derived from them, the authors resolutely start from the theory (the social brain hypothesis) and try to fit in the archaeological findings. So they conclude that the increasing social contacts forced people to new solutions such as speech and imagination, and thus stimulated the expansion of brain contents.

As I present it now, this evolution seems clear and straightforward, but I noticed whilst reading this book that throughout the chapters (which may have been written by different authors) that that social brain hypothesis is sometimes used as a proposition, but sometimes also as an established fact. So, this is not entirely consistent. The authors also defend their view by highlighting the limitations of the archaeological approach in a rather derogatory way. For example, they talk about the principle of WYSWTW (What You See is What There Was). Of course I think that scientists should adhere strictly to the evidence, and I follow the archaeologists in that. On the other hand, the social sciences have developed various theories and hypotheses that can lead to a better understanding of certain evolutions, that go beyond the material data; but prudence certainly seems appropriate. And in that respect, while reading this book, some alarm bells went off every now and then. Especially towards the end, when the authors speculate about the influence of song and dance on the development of speech and language, and about the capacity for empathy and imagination of homo sapiens in particular, the researchers lost me.

All in all, this is of course an interesting book, but it remained rather superficial to me and I do not think the authors' basic statement really is convincing. So, like the issue of the chicken and the egg: this just isn’t a relevant question to ask!

[Ross · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got his book to get an overview of the most recent findings in the evolution of Homo sapiens.
I have read scores of books during the last 60 years on the origin of species and the descent of man and I like to keep up on the science.
Unfortunately I learned absolutely nothing new from this book except that the lead author calls himself an "archeology psychologist" which is a discipline I had never heard of before. This is a field, it turns out, is one where you don't need actual evidence to speculate about how we became human. The author states frankly that there are two kinds of archeologists, those that need actual evidence and those that don't. For the first category he states these are the "WYSWTW people."
These are the scientists who believe that "what you see is what there was." He is of the second category because there just isn't any new hard evidence to work with.
So this book is based on pure speculation of how our species probably evolved, based on what we are today.
I was trained and worked as an earth scientist so the approach of this book is simply pure nonsense to me. It is a big stretch to give it 2 stars. It did remind me of some things I already knew of the wonderful science of why we are here.

[Ines · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recommend this book to anyone even moderately interested in our evolution and an important book to learn with what social background we started and have to live now.

[Toby Newton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Never boring, but it never really catches fire, either. The central thesis is a good one, I'd say - that the need to develop social technologies in order to manage human affairs in larger groups drove the gradual expansion of the human brain quite as much as did the development and use of the widely celebrated material technologies that have survived in the archeological record. I'm not sure why it should matter which "came first" or quite how the pas de deux played out. The key insight is that the evolution of the species is tied as much to relationality as to gadgetry. It should also give us pause for thought when gadgetry comes to mediate relationality.

[Jeannette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good try guys! Oddly, on Goodreads, the author of this book comes up as Robin Dunbar. Actually, the book I got from the library was written by Clive Gamble John Gowlett AND Robin Dunbar. These men are part of a team looking into paleoanthro/paleoarcheopology, that is - they are exploring why and when and how our present human mind evolved. Conclusion is that is all because of our social connections and the need to deal with the nexus of relationships that made us such successful primate survivors. Dunbar's number of around 150 human relationships that can be maintained is something we explored back in our Cambridge days and we've been happily reminded of its importance over the decades since. Now the team that wrote this book put all the info together and spell out how it all works, the Social Mind. As a popular book, I hope more people read it, but for me, I wanted more. I'm left with a hunger for more detail about the development of material things, how memes work, how people spread around the world, how groups really work day to day, how modern minds might be working with the overwhelming numbers of people and information out there.

[Adrian]

This book was the result of the Lucy project which combined the insights of psychology and archaeology to determine how and when the human mind evolved into what it is today. Much is made of two psychological ideas; theory of mind and order of intentionality which are capacities which separate modern humans from apes and Neanderthals. These scientists believe that it was the need to socialize and work with an expanded group of individuals while roughing it on the African savannah that increased our brain capacity and led to things we can actually recover from the archaeological record like sophisticated tools, fire and art. There is much that is speculative here but some suppositions are interesting, for example, there is an idea that laughing replaced finger tip grooming (such as the apes do) and that laughing led to music and music to language.

[Yinxue · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting read, though more direct connections between arguments and evidence throughout sections would have enhanced the reading experience. I wouldn't say their logic is water tight, nor was the writing satisfyingly scholarly (too much narratives for my liking for a hypothesis testing/contending book), but enough playing safe in the field. Maybe certain amount of speculation is healthy in such a difficult discipline. As of now, consider me intrigued and partially sold.

[Dessi Bocheva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not what I expected based on the title, largely focused on anthropological evidence rather than the evolution of societies.

[Radosław Magiera · Rating 5 out of 5]

Skąd się wziął, jak i dlaczego powstał homo sapiens, to jedne z najważniejszych pytań, jakie stawia przed sobą ludzkość. Teolodzy twierdzili, że człowieka stworzył Bóg (przy czym teoretycy każdej religii twierdzili oczywiście, że to ich Bóg tego dokonał). Darwiniści twierdzili, że człowieka stworzyła ewolucja i że pochodzi on od małpy. Dziś nawet rozsądni ludzie wierzący nie próbują bronić tezy o boskim pochodzeniu człowieka, gdyż jeśli nawet to Bóg stworzył świat, człowieka w tym świecie jeszcze wtedy nie było. Poglądy Darwina też okazały się błędne. Dzisiejsze człowiekowate, szczególnie szympansy, z którymi mamy najwięcej wspólnego, miały z nami ostatniego wspólnego przodka przodka (ang. last common ancestor, LCA) około 7 milionów lat temu, więc ledwie chwilkę temu w skali wieku wszechświata. Choć w chwili obecnej nie mamy pojęcia, jak ten przodek mógł wyglądać, ponieważ nie odkryliśmy żadnego szkieletu, który można byłoby zidentyfikować jako LCA, to jednak wiemy na pewno iż nie wyglądał on jak szympans, gdyż LCA od szympansów oddziela te same siedem milionów lat niezależnej ewolucji, co homo sapiens.

W szkołach nadal uczą, że homo sapiens wykształcił swój unikalny w świecie zwierząt mózg, by tworzyć narzędzia i ich używać. Nie jest to przekonujące wyjaśnienie choćby dlatego, iż koszt ewolucyjny takiego eksperymentu jak nowy, wielki mózg jest ogromny. Wiemy dziś z jednej strony, że między powstaniem naszego mózgu a eksplozją postępu naukowego, technicznego oraz technologicznego jest ogromna przepaść czasowa, a z drugiej, iż już mózg pierwszego homo sapiens anatomicznie niczym się nie różnił od mózgu pozwalającego żyć w świecie smartfonów, GPS-ów, wyższej matematyki i wyrafinowanej sztuki. Mechanizm ewolucji nie dopuszcza innowacji, które przynoszą tylko koszty, a zyski dopiero ewentualnie, w niewyobrażalnie dalekiej przyszłości. Jest jeszcze sporo innych ważkich argumentów przeciwko technologii jako przyczynie wyewoluowania homo sapiens. Okazuje się jednak, iż istnieje dużo bardziej atrakcyjna, dużo bardziej przekonująca teoria. To teoria mózgu społecznego.

Książka Clive’a Gamble’a, John’a Gowlett’a i Robin I.M. Dunbara Potęga mózgu. Jak ewolucja życia społecznego kształtowała ludzki umysł, przybliża nam tę teorię przy okazji opisu wyników realizacji siedmioletniego projektu (2003–2010) finansowanego przez obchodzącą wówczas stulecie swojego istnienia Akademię Brytyjską, nazwanego Od Lucy do języka: Archeologia mózgu społecznego (Lucy to Language: The Archaeology of the Social Brain). Pokazuje podróż Lucy od ludzkiego przodka o małym mózgu aż po globalny gatunek o otwartym umyśle i wykazuje, że od teorii o technologicznym podłożu powstania człowieka myślącego nieporównanie bardziej przekonująca jest hipoteza o społecznych przyczynach powstania naszego gatunku. Od czytelników, którzy nigdy nie spotkali się z takimi terminami jak liczba Dunbara czy poziomy intencjonalności, lektura będzie wymagała trochę więcej niż od tych, którzy z tą tematyką już mieli do czynienia. Na szczęście wszystko jest w miarę jasno, od podstaw wyłożone.

Opracowanie w warstwie merytorycznej jest bezcenne. To jedna z tych pozycji, które są absolutnym must read dla każego, kogo interesuje prehistoria, filozofia, religia, polityka i sam Bóg wie ile jeszcze dziedzin. To bowiem, jak powstaliśmy, dlaczego i w jaki sposób, jest kardynalnym interdyscyplinarnym problem wykraczającym poza naukę i sięgającym nawet tak z pozoru odległych dziedzin jak sztuka, polityka, wojskowość i wiara. Nie wyobrażam sobie, by ktokolwiek, kto lubi wiedzieć, mógł nie być tym zainteresowany.

Jedynym minusem wydania, przynajmniej polskiego, jest pozostawiający sporo do życzenia poziom stylistyczny. Nie powiedziałbym też, iż całość udało się zbudować w sposób wskazujący na dobrą kompozycję dzieła i klarowność przekazu. Moim zdaniem można to było zrobić dużo lepiej, a że można, tego są w literaturze popularnonaukowej liczne przykłady. Treść jednak przebija wszystkie słabości formy. Potęga mózgu to porcja prawdziwej Wiedzy przez duże W.

Gorąco zapraszam do lektury

źródło:
http://klub-aa.blogspot.com/2021/05/c...

[Brian Clegg · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was young, my main exposure to popular science was through my Dad's collection of Pelican paperbacks, where academics expounded on the likes of animals without backbones or some archeological wonder such as Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb or Schliemann's adventures uncovering Troy. On the whole I preferred the archaeology titles, as they tended to have more of a story - but when I read Thinking Big, I was plunged back into that world.

The topic helps - we've got a combination of archaeology, palaeontology and psychology here - but there's also something about the feel of the book. The authors are generally rather serious about what they're doing, there's that same small, finicky print and the reader does have to work reasonably hard to get much out of it.

Part of the difficulty is that the thread of the book is quite meandering and the underlying science sometimes feels distinctly vague. At the core is the 'social brain hypothesis' - the idea that the size of the brain (or to be precise, certain aspects of the brain) is correlated to social group sizes and that the story of the evolution of homo sapiens is driven strongly by these social group sizes and their implications.

The reason the science can seem vague is that inevitably there is a lot of hypothesising going on here. Apparently many archeologists don't like the approach taken and prefer to adopt a WYSWTW - What You See is What There Was - mantra. The trouble with this is that it is guaranteed to be wrong, where the approach taken by the authors only might be wrong. the WYSWTW fans simply deny the existence of anything in prehistoric society that doesn't leave concrete remains. But you can't find a fossilised belief, a mummified song or the remains of a conversation - so this leaves their picture of the life of these early hominins and humans that is very sparse and boring.

The alternative approach taken in this book is to accept that there was more going on than will leave remains and to try to make deductions from how developing brains will, for example, be able to deal with more levels of intention (I know that you are aware that she is lying, for example) and will be reflected in different group sizes, with the significant implications these will have for culture. Throw in how factors such as religion, music and language can also impact the effectiveness of social groups and there seems to be a way here to feel crudely back to the social life of our ancestors.

Although it's not written in a hugely approachable style - too academic in approach - and the driving concept suffers from an inevitable degree of vagueness, this feels like an important piece of work and one that anyone with an interest in early human and pre-human society should add to their reading list.

[Mark Walter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thinking Big takes you on a journey from small brained apes to large brained modern humans.

Each stage of evolution is framed in how the social group our ancestors operated in both pushed us forward and how the technology we developed was a direct result of meeting the needs of our social group. These technologies would later compound quickly to form modern society. The example that resonated best was the use of fire.

In order to maintain a large number of social interactions, we needed to devote a greater proportion of our day to 'grooming' these relationships. Initially this took the form of literal grooming, removing ticks from each other. This was limited by the hours of daylight. With the harnessing of fire, grooming could continue into the evening. With the group around a fire, it was also possible to develop from 'fingertip grooming' to vocal grooming, possibly via laughter, singing and music.

Our social groups are also limited by our brains capacity to process the stage of 'intentionality'. I think, that you believe, the my motivations are, which are driven by our parents teachings on.... Five stages are most peoples natural limit, which in turn restricts our social group to 150 close relationships.

I felt the book gave us another lens through which to understand how evolution has taken us to where we are today. However, without the context of the other factors driving natural selection, it is unclear whether social grouping is the dominant factor. We could be incorrectly attributing social groups as the cause of evolution, rather than a by product of the other factors at play.

[YHC · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading his The Science of Love and Betrayal, the idea is more or less similar. 150 is the number that a human can handle maximum as relationship. Time is a very critical, as long as we keep physical distance, it dies out, a friendship will fade if no one initiate the warm up move.
Family boundary is different, we won't really lose it unless you have never been in good family relationship and use friendship to replace it.

Also social life increase the brain capacity. We can see those smartest animals are usually social animals.

points to save! https://book.douban.com/review/10571986/
另外几个比较有意思的点：

1. 激素内啡肽，由大脑分泌，对抗身体出现的疼痛和应激状态。轻柔的抚摸、体育锻炼，都会产生内啡肽。内啡肽所带来的放松，这种心理状态让我们与任何凑巧共事的个体建立起信任关系。

2. 发笑，发笑过程中，只有吸气过程，会发生气力耗尽的现象，更易产生疲劳，产生内啡肽效应，而大猩猩的发笑只涉及简单的呼气/吸气过程。主动表达音乐也会产生内啡肽。

3. 社会行为中很重要的一点就是一夫一妻制，这关系到后代的养育问题。那么人类到底是一夫一妻制还是一夫多妻制呢？爱玛·尼尔森提出，利用食指和无名指的长度比例，这一比例会受到胎儿期睾酮水平的影响，男性的食指比无名指要更短一些，在一夫一妻制的猴子和猿类中，食指：无名指的长度接近于1：1（甚至还略微大一些）；而在一夫多妻制的物种中，这个数值明显要低（0.9左右）。人类呢，处于这两者之间。一夫一妻制是一种沉溺状态，会需要行为和认知上的重大改变，进而带来脑结构的改变，而这似乎是进化的末路，灵活性的缺失是不会带来进化上的成功的。

[Jasmin Hansen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thinking Big, the product of a seven year project, is a book that will change the way you look on the world, and how you perceive it. You will start questioning everything from what exactly language is (sounds created when you breath in particular ways that somehow can convey emotions, stories and thoughts) to the foundation of modern archeology. By combining psychology and archaeology this book challenges the WYSIWTW approach to deep-history together with what previously has been defined as intelligence (IQ is measured through your language and mathematical skills, but if, as this book argues, it is the complex social life of humans that has driven the enlargement of our brain, it posses the question if IQ really is the best way to define intelligence), thereby creating new and interesting possibilities in the realm of archeology and psychology. Yet you do not need to study either of these fields to understand the book. Here the authors take you by hand as walk you through their discoveries.

All in all, the book is an interesting read, and I would recommend it to everybody, who has any interest toward archeology, psychology and evolution.

[Karolina Libront · Rating 4 out of 5]

Więcej o archeologii i paleontologii niż o ewolucji życia społecznego, pełna niesamowitej wiedzy bezużytecznej :-)) ale ja lubię takie książki. Natomiast tłumaczenie do kitu: naprawdę ciężko czyta się tekst, gdy tłumacz co 4-5 zdań pisze „niemniej jednak”, na co mam uczulenie.

[Arno Mosikyan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting attempt to furnish evolution theory of human brain to the its social function. Liked it, and discovered many interesting authors for further reading on anthropology.

[Mika Neuhaus · Rating 2 out of 5]

langweilig : - (

[Stephen Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best surveys of the evolution of the human mind that I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a few…

Presented by Robin Dunbar (very well known in the field, and originator of the Dunbar Number), Clive Gamble and John Gowlett, 'Thinking Big: How The Evolution Of Social Life Shaped The Human Mind' is the written culmination of a major, well-funded anthropology project called Lucy, whose intention was to investigate the social brain theory of human evolution. In a nutshell, this theory as presented in the book uses archaeological evidence, evidence from the great apes and from remaining hunter-gatherer societies to show how the need to grasp increasingly complex social interactions – represented by the Dunbar Number of the species in question – led to the evolution of the brain, of the human mind, and, although the authors almost never refer to it, of consciousness.

The Dunbar Number is the number of individuals that an individual can keep in mind in genuine social interactions, and for human beings it is around 150. This number comes up in all sorts of circumstances, showing how we, though technologically advanced, are true to our ancient roots. 150 comes up in social media, in military organisation, in English village life, and in a myriad other places. Apes have smaller numbers, chimps smaller still, reflecting the fact that their social networks are smaller.

Beginning with a survey of the anthropological field, the authors then move through our ancestors of 2.6 million years ago, through later hominids, and then through homo heidelbergensis, homo neanderthalensis and homo sapiens to show how all the evidence links together in support of the social brain theory. Human ancestors living in increasingly complex societies faced immense selection pressures from themselves, as only those able to keep in mind complex relationships were able to thrive. Interestingly, the evolutionary pressure from environmental factors (eg climate change) is comparatively played down.

There is also an explanation for one of the more puzzling events in our past, the “cultural revolution” of 40,000 years ago, when music, sculpture and art all appear in the archaeological record. This mystifying and very sudden explosion of culture is more easily explained by the preceding slow and steady emotional and psychological development of homo sapiens, which the authors point out leaves no trace, but which is clear from their evidence. Here they cite laughter, music and chanting, and family life, with only the latter leaving faint “real” marks in our environment.

This really is an exceptional book, confirming Thames & Hudson’s place in providing outstanding work in the field of archaeology, anthropology and human evolution. The authors should be proud of their achievement. I very rarely give 5* reviews because in the post-internet world such awards have become rather meaningless, but this work is so clear, so well written, well researched and presented that I don’t think it deserves anything less.

[Debbie Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book in exchange for an honest review from Goodreads First Reads and instantly knew that my husband would enjoy this book more than I would have. I'm into fiction and he is into non-fiction. Here is Martin's take on this very interesting book – He read me quite a few passages, all of which were fascinating.

Somewhere back in time in primate evolution, perhaps about 7 million years ago, some ape like precursor to Chimpanzees and Humans hit an evolutionary fork in the road, one side leading to modern Chimpanzees, the other to modern humans. The earliest fossils on the human side of this division have a brain size of around 325cc. The fossil of “Lucy” (a very ancient ancestor) had a cranium of over 400cc. Modern human’s (and our Neanderthal “cousins”) had/have a 1200cc brain.

This book is the result of a multi-year research project using multiple disciplines: archeology, social archeology, evolutionary psychology and many more; to explore the how and why the brain evolved from 400cc to 1200cc and the hypothesis is quite interesting. The brain grew to adapt to the increasing complexity of social interaction as the size of social group grew, what the author’s term the “social brain”.

I found the book very interesting, and quite enlightening, although I wouldn’t call it a light or quick read. It is not a textbook by any stretch, even though it is the result of scholarly research. It poses a number of intriguing questions, not the least of which is “When did we become human?” Spoiler alert: the authors do not directly answer this question, but take the reader on a detailed journey through time and social development tracing the evolution of the species, and I learned quite a bit about “us” along the way.

[Dave Schey · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Thinking Big, the authors do a good job of showing how the evolution of our Hominin ancestors and the development of tools, art, religion, music, kinship, myths, etc. went into making us who we are. Their emphasis is on the evolution of our brain and the resulting orders of intentionality that were then made possible. The 6 orders of intentionality are:
1st Order - Present in monkeys and lesser apes and some mammals such as elephants and dolphins - expressed by self-awareness as judged by recognizing yourself in a mirror or a belief about something.
2nd - (Theory of mind) Present in 5-year old children, all small-brained hominins (400-900 cc) and probably great apes - I have a belief about your belief
3rd - Present in all large-brained hominins (>900 cc) - you have a belief about her belief which is not my belief.
4th - Present in Homo heidelbergensis and neandertals - shared religious beliefs involving several people and ancestral beings.
5th - Present in modern humans - use of myth and storytelling of increasing complexity and involving real and imaginary worlds and their cast of characters.
6th - Present in only a few modern humans - use of complex symbolism.

[Ernest Barker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like this book. It is centered on how evolution develop our mind hence "Thinking Big".

This review says it better than I can. I took it from the publishers website http://www.thamesandhudson.com/Thinki...

"This pathbreaking and provocative book proposes that it was the need for early humans to live in ever-larger social groups over greater distances – the ability to ‘think big’ – that drove the enlargement of the human brain and the development of the human mind. This ‘social brain hypothesis’, put forward by evolutionary psychologists such as Robin Dunbar, can be tested against archaeological and fossil evidence.

The conclusions here – the fruits of over seven years of research – build on the insight that modern humans live in effective social groups of about 150 (so-called ‘Dunbar’s number’), some three times the size of those of apes and our early ancestors."

[Eimantas Janutėnas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although I got this book for casual reading, it was surprisingly interesting. Highly recommend for anyone interested in historical human development as species with regards to social life and behavior.

Book reads itself quite lightly