Robin Dunbar

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 almost necessary to adjust the family tree of the human family, almost haphazardly.

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 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/3204620834… (mere)