Human Evolution and the Origins of Hierarchies: The State of Nature

Description

In this book, Benoit Dubreuil explores the creation and destruction of hierarchies in human evolution. Combining the methods of archaeology, anthropology, cognitive neuroscience and primatology, he offers a natural history of hierarchies from the point of view of both cultural and biological evolution. This volume explains why dominance hierarchies typical of primate societies disappeared in the human lineage and why the emergence of large-scale societies during the Neolithic period implied increased social differentiation, the creation of status hierarchies, and, eventually, political centralisation.

Benoit Dubreuil is a postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Philosophy of the Universite du Quebec a Montreal. His work on moral philosophy and philosophy of science has been published in Biology and Philosophy, Philosophical Explorations, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, and Review of Philosophy and Psychology.