The Evolution of Childhood

The Evolution of Childhood

EnglishPaperback / softback
Konner Melvin
Harvard University Press
EAN: 9780674062016
On order
Delivery on Thursday, 6. of February 2025
CZK 1,429
Common price CZK 1,588
Discount 10%
pc
Do you want this product today?
Oxford Bookshop Praha Korunní
not available
Librairie Francophone Praha Štěpánská
not available
Oxford Bookshop Ostrava
not available
Oxford Bookshop Olomouc
not available
Oxford Bookshop Plzeň
not available
Oxford Bookshop Brno
not available
Oxford Bookshop Hradec Králové
not available
Oxford Bookshop České Budějovice
not available
Oxford Bookshop Liberec
not available

Detailed information

This book is an intellectual tour de force: a comprehensive Darwinian interpretation of human development. Looking at the entire range of human evolutionary history, Melvin Konner tells the compelling and complex story of how cross-cultural and universal characteristics of our growth from infancy to adolescence became rooted in genetically inherited characteristics of the human brain.

All study of our evolution starts with one simple truth: human beings take an extraordinarily long time to grow up. What does this extended period of dependency have to do with human brain growth and social interactions? And why is play a sign of cognitive complexity, and a spur for cultural evolution? As Konner explores these questions, and topics ranging from bipedal walking to incest taboos, he firmly lays the foundations of psychology in biology.

As his book eloquently explains, human learning and the greatest human intellectual accomplishments are rooted in our inherited capacity for attachments to each other. In our love of those we learn from, we find our way as individuals and as a species. Never before has this intersection of the biology and psychology of childhood been so brilliantly described.

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution," wrote Dobzhansky. In this remarkable book, Melvin Konner shows that nothing in childhood makes sense except in the light of evolution.

EAN 9780674062016
ISBN 0674062019
Binding Paperback / softback
Publisher Harvard University Press
Publication date November 30, 2011
Pages 960
Language English
Dimensions 235 x 162
Country United States
Readership General
Authors Konner Melvin
Illustrations 18 tables