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Thinking Big: How the Evolution of Social Life Shaped the Human Mind Hardcover – June 17, 2014

by Robin Dunbar (Author), Clive Gamble (Author), John Gowlett (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 36 ratings
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A closer look at genealogy, incorporating how biological, anthropological, and technical factors can influence human lives

We are at a pivotal moment in understanding our remote ancestry and its implications for how we live today. The barriers to what we can know about our distant relatives have been falling as a result of scientific advance, such as decoding the genomes of humans and Neanderthals, and bringing together different perspectives to answer common questions. These collaborations have brought new knowledge and suggested fresh concepts to examine. The results have shaken the old certainties.

The results are profound; not just for the study of the past but for appreciating why we conduct our social lives in ways, and at scales, that are familiar to all of us. But such basic familiarity raises a dilemma. When surrounded by the myriad technical and cultural innovations that support our global, urbanized lifestyles we can lose sight of the small social worlds we actually inhabit and that can be traced deep into our ancestry. So why do we need art, religion, music, kinship, myths, and all the other facets of our over-active imaginations if the reality of our effective social worlds is set by a limit of some one hundred and fifty partners (Dunbar’s number) made of family, friends, and useful acquaintances? How could such a social community lead to a city the size of London or a country as large as China? Do we really carry our hominin past into our human present? It is these small worlds, and the link they allow to the study of the past that forms the central point in this book. 40 black-and-white illustrations
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  1. Print length
    224 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Thames & Hudson
  4. Publication date
    June 17, 2014
  5. Dimensions
    6.5 x 1 x 9.6 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0500051801
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0500051801
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Centered on some provocative questions about the evolutionary development of the human mind."
― Ancient History Encyclopedia

About the Author

Robin Dunbar is head of the Social and Evolutionary Neuroscience Research Group at the University of Oxford. He has published numerous books including Grooming Gossip and the Evolution of Language (2004), The Human Story (2005), How Many Friends Does One Person Need?: Dunbar’s Number and Other Evolutionary Quirks (2011), The Science of Love (2012) and The Science of Love and Betrayal (2013).

Clive Gamble is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Southampton. His publications include Origins and Revolutions: Human Identity in Earliest Prehistory (2007) and Archaeology: The Basics (2007).

John Gowlett is Professor of Archaeology at Liverpool University. He has published numerous articles and contributions within edited volumes.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Thames & Hudson; 1st edition (June 17, 2014)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0500051801
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0500051801
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.52 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1 x 9.6 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 36 ratings

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  1. Clive Gamble

    Clive Gamble

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  2. John Gowlett

    John Gowlett

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  3. R. I. M. Dunbar

    R. I. M. Dunbar

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
36 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Artyom
5.0 out of 5 stars Detailed portrait of our evolution - must read
Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2022
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Despite this book was written 8 years ago, yet this is the best picture of what we know or can deduce about our evolution since Australopithecus. This is what happens when a world class Evolutionary Neuroscientist joins forces with Anthropologists.
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Petek Feriha Uzuner
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United States on July 24, 2015
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It has helped me further understand my species in perspective and that we are not here forever. Nobody was.
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Walter bergholz
5.0 out of 5 stars From small to huge
Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2014
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Interesting view of how human nature is now and how our brain rather small community relationships but our imagination has allowed us to have compueter (to send this review for intance) or even reach the moon.
3 people found this helpful
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Bill Pincus
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Read about a Fascinating Topic
Reviewed in the United States on July 25, 2016
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Excellent Introduction to the Social Brain Theory of Evolution. Very Informative and well written. I highly recommend this book.
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John
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2015
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it is a Dunbar... ins't it?
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Historypro
5.0 out of 5 stars On the the two best books on human evolution (the other is Dunbar's Human ...
Reviewed in the United States on October 15, 2014
On the the two best books on human evolution (the other is Dunbar's Human Evolution). An excellent and up-to-date introduction to the topic.
5 people found this helpful
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Anton Reger
2.0 out of 5 stars I found it unnecessarily complicated. First
Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2018
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I found it unnecessarily complicated. First, he redefines everything..don't know why. Then he sets about telling us in excruciating detail what others have said that is wrong. Then he lays out his formula, which seems simplistic, like drawing diagrams in the air. Then he tells us what nobody knows. Somehow, we're supposed to make sense of this mess. It reminds me of when I was getting my Masters in Latin American history, which is arcane enough, only to have to wade through Marxist 'historians,' taking the same approach. On some level, it's maddening. I say 'he' because Clive Gamble's fingerprints are all over it.
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Top reviews from other countries

Mannesis
5.0 out of 5 stars from my blog: The authors start from the Machiavellian ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 12, 2014
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from my blog:
The authors start from the Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis (we need large brains to be able to deceive others in our social group) to which Gamble et al counter with the social brain hypothesis. They claim that sophisticated social animals need to be able to mentalize (infer others state of mind) at high levels of sophistication and to understand complex social structure while maintaining cohesion. Laughter and music act as substitutes to grooming and are termed social grooming. Social grooming happens in our mind. And our mind is about being relational and not just rational. All social emotions (guilt, shame, pride) are only possible when a belief exists about another’s belief (mentalizing). By developing social structures and language we are also able to “store relationships”, which facilitates the creation of even larger social units. While language is furthermore driven by the necessity to accommodate interaction with “unobserved” others.
.....
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Tarkus
4.0 out of 5 stars why there are no monkeys on facebook
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 15, 2017
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At the core of the "Social Brain" hypothesis is the suggestion that social group size in primates is limited by the relative size of the neocortex. This posed a challenge for the early hominins who moved beyond the forest habitats occupied by their ancestors, as in open habitats, they would be more vulnerable to predators and their main defence would be that of a belonging to a larger group. At the same time, increased group size also makes direct contact between individuals more difficult. Physical grooming - a primary means of maintaining relationships in primate groups - must be replaced by other, more symbolic connections (such as language) if the group is to remain cohesive. In meeting these challenges, our ancestors embarked on a process of brain evolution which facilitated larger effective group sizes and the transmission of innovations over long distances and between widely scattered groups. This capacity to handle large, dispersed, social networks is the key to human evolution.

It's a persuasive thesis. However, it is significant that this book does not represent a balanced synthesis of all the disciplines which have contributed to the "Social Brain" hypothesis. Rather, it emphasises the work of the 7 year long "Lucy to Language" project which focused on the archaeological evidence. and the book reflects the strengths and weaknesses of this emphasis.

Highlights include discussions of the exclusively hominid innovations of the use of fire and the technology of the handaxe. Less satisfactory is that evidence from extant models - particularly other primate cultures, and modern hunter-gatherer societies - is too often absent or inadequately considered. For example, the key graph establishing the relationship between neocortex size and group size includes points that appear to represent 19 monkey species and 3 (not 4?) great apes - but no point is identified on the graph and nowhere in the text is the specific social organisation of any one species described. Since some could include species like the baboon - which occupies precisely the same kind of savannah environment that the book suggests the earliest hominins did - this failure seems strange. Similarly, although the book describes the colonisation of the interior of Australia by Aboriginal humans, there is no discussion of their social organisation - instead, we are left with highly speculative suggestions from extremely scanty fossil hominin evidence. Just how precarious this evidence may be is indicated by the number of remarks that anywhere else would be casual asides, but here seem to be offered as actual evidence. For example, the discovery of a broken axe, found beside a pool with the handle close by the head, seems to be cited as evidence of the emotional disposition of Homo heidelbergensis - "Probably any modern human would have reacted to breaking a favourite tool- you or I might have reacted by throwing it into the pond. But H. heidelbergensis placidly left the two pieces side by side". Similarly, it is suggested that humans are able to maintain concentration on a task for longer periods than other primates as a result of our need to focus on others' mental states. No evidence is offered for this, beyond the following statement - "Chimpanzees are notoriously poor at concentration (except in prolonged bouts of gaining food), but humans can spend hours gazing into each other's eyes, solving a problem or listening to a sermon". The critical reader will immediately ask - "why is chimp's concentration disqualified? And when was the last time I gazed into another person's eyes *for hours*?" The bar for "evidence" here seems exceptionally low!

Part of the problem seems to be the insistence on human exceptionalism - "Truly, we are no longer apes" declares chapter one. But a closer and more sympathetic consideration of the behaviour and cognition of other apes actually makes the steps towards humanity easier. For example, when discussing the importance of social grooming, the authors assert that more abstract and particularly human forms of connection - such as music and laughter - are necessary to extend an emotional bond beyond a dyad, but doesn't that prompt the reader to think, "So what about wolves chorusing?" or to recall how chimpanzee females habitually groom males who have just fought each other so as manipulate them into grooming each other as a means of repairing social bonds?

By the end, my copy was bristling with post-its notes bearing double question marks and phrases beginning, "But what about....?!" But I kept reading, and am glad that I did. There is a great deal of thought-provoking and fascinating material here, and it's well worth the time.
4 people found this helpful
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Ben
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic read
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 8, 2016
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Really recommend! A great read!
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Mark Reeve
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 23, 2014
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Excellent thought provoking book by a leading archaeological writer.
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Kari Saarvola, s.c.
3.0 out of 5 stars Three Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 24, 2015
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Start with this and you find yourself in a bigining of new road...
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