The Chosen Primate

About this book

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, sociobiology, and gender studies on anthropology. The Chosen Primate is also a fascinating narrative of the history of the people and places that have shaped anthropology, taking us to Olduvai Gorge with the Leakeys, the Kalahari with the Marshalls, and Samoa with Margaret Mead. The Chosen Primate ends by looking forward to the next millennium, noting that our future depends on our response to another fundamental question: Will our culture, which has given us the means to adapt successfully to nature, ultimately destroy nature? In raising this question, Kuper shows that debates in anthropology are more than just academic disputes - they engage the major issues of our time.