Inheritance:The Evolutionary Origins of the Mode World

by: Harvey Whitehouse (Author)

Publisher: Belknap Press:An Imprint of Harvard University Press

Publication Date: 2024/8/20

Language: English

Print Length: 368 pages

ISBN-10: 067429162X

ISBN-13: 9780674291621

Book Description

“An insightful and breathtaking exploration of humanity’s evolutionary baggage that explains some of our species’ greatest successes and failures.” ―Yuval Noah Harari, author of SapiensThe ancient inheritance that made us who we are―and is now driving us to ruin.Each of us is endowed with an inheritance―a set of evolved biases and cultural tools that shape every facet of our behavior. For countless generations, this inheritance has taken us to ever greater heights:driving the rise of more sophisticated technologies, more organized religions, more expansive empires. But now, for the first time, it’s failing us. We find ourselves hurtling toward a future of unprecedented political polarization, deadlier war, and irreparable environmental destruction.In Inheritance, renowned anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse offers a sweeping account of how our biases have shaped humanity’s past and imperil its future. He argues that three biases―conformism, religiosity, and tribalism―drive human behavior everywhere. Forged by natural selection and haessed by thousands of years of cultural evolution, these biases catalyzed the greatest transformations in human history, from the birth of agriculture and the arrival of the first kings to the rise and fall of human sacrifice and the creation of multiethnic empires. Taking us deep into mode-day tribes, including terrorist cells and predatory ad agencies, Whitehouse shows how, as we lose the cultural scaffolding that allowed us to manage our biases, the world we’ve built is spiraling out of control.By uncovering how human nature has shaped our collective history, Inheritance unveils a surprising new path to solving our most urgent mode problems. The result is a powerful reappraisal of the human jouey, one that transforms our understanding of who we are, and who we could be.

About the Author

“An insightful and breathtaking exploration of humanity’s evolutionary baggage that explains some of our species’ greatest successes and failures.” ―Yuval Noah Harari, author of SapiensThe ancient inheritance that made us who we are―and is now driving us to ruin.Each of us is endowed with an inheritance―a set of evolved biases and cultural tools that shape every facet of our behavior. For countless generations, this inheritance has taken us to ever greater heights:driving the rise of more sophisticated technologies, more organized religions, more expansive empires. But now, for the first time, it’s failing us. We find ourselves hurtling toward a future of unprecedented political polarization, deadlier war, and irreparable environmental destruction.In Inheritance, renowned anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse offers a sweeping account of how our biases have shaped humanity’s past and imperil its future. He argues that three biases―conformism, religiosity, and tribalism―drive human behavior everywhere. Forged by natural selection and haessed by thousands of years of cultural evolution, these biases catalyzed the greatest transformations in human history, from the birth of agriculture and the arrival of the first kings to the rise and fall of human sacrifice and the creation of multiethnic empires. Taking us deep into mode-day tribes, including terrorist cells and predatory ad agencies, Whitehouse shows how, as we lose the cultural scaffolding that allowed us to manage our biases, the world we’ve built is spiraling out of control.By uncovering how human nature has shaped our collective history, Inheritance unveils a surprising new path to solving our most urgent mode problems. The result is a powerful reappraisal of the human jouey, one that transforms our understanding of who we are, and who we could be.