“A brilliant work on a profoundly important subject. The leading scientific authority on motherhood has come through again.” —E. O. Wilson
“Thought provoking…An engaging and compelling argument [that] requires us to rethink entrenched views about how we came to be human.” —Science
Somewhere in Africa, more than a million years ago, a line of apes began to raise their young differently from their great ancestors. From this new form of care emerged new ways of interacting and understanding each other. How these unique human abilities evolved and how they kept us alive for thousands of generations is the mystery unraveled in this ambitious and broad new dimension of human emotional evolution. The care and upbringing of children are key in the primate-unique duration of human childhood. If the young were to survive in a world with limited food, they needed to be cared for, not only by their mothers but also by siblings, uncles, fathers, friends—and, if we were lucky, grandmothers. From this complex and dependent form of child-rearing, Sarah Hrdy argues, came the human capacity for understanding others. Mothers and others teach us who to care for and who not to.
From her initial vision with “apes on a plane”? to descriptions of baby care among marmosets, chimpanzees, wolves, and lions? as well as explanations of why men in hunter-gatherer societies hunt together, 'Mothers and Others' is readable and engaging. It is also a complexly coherent argument that since the Pleistocene epoch, it takes a village to raise children — and how this gave our ancient ancestors the first boost on the road to emerging modern human emotionality.
Pages: 432, Year of Publication: 0415, Dimensions: 15.6x15.6cm
