The Chosen Primate

Adam Kuper

We are all Darwinians now. Yet while we know that five million years ago our ancestors were much like chimpanzees, we still can't say why we, of all primates, became human. Is there a Darwinian explanation for how Homo sapiens evolved? Or has human culture made us so very different from other animals that we require a distinctive strategy to explain our development? These questions, at the heart of the great debate on human origins and the history of human culture, are the focus of The Chosen Primate, a fundamental rethinking of the pursuits of anthropology. Balancing biological and cultural perspectives, Adam Kuper reviews our beliefs about human origins, the history of human culture, genes and intelligence, the nature of the differences between males and females, and the foundations of human politics. Within the context of Darwinian theory, he traces the influence of eugenics,...

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