Studies of brain evolution have moved rapidly in recent years, building on the pioneering research of Harry J. Jerison. This book provides state-of-the-art reviews of primate (including human) brain evolution. The volume is divided into two sections, the first offers new perspectives on the developmental, physiological, dietary, and behavioral correlates of brain enlargement. However, it has long been recognized that brains do not merely enlarge globally as they evolve, but that their cortical and internal organization also changes in a process known as reorganization. Species-specific...
Studies of brain evolution have moved rapidly in recent years, building on the pioneering research of Harry J. Jerison. This book provides state-of-th...
When first published in 1992, Braindance presented a revolutionary look at the origins of the human brain. Biological anthropologist Dean Falk now brings the discussion into the 21st century. In this revised edition with a new preface and updated information through 2003, she reexamines her groundbreaking research of how the human brain evolved and reveals how this process continues to impact our species.Around two million years ago, our earliest hominin ancestors experienced an explosive brain expansion, at least one million years after they began to walk upright. Rather than linking...
When first published in 1992, Braindance presented a revolutionary look at the origins of the human brain. Biological anthropologist Dean Falk ...
Scientists have long theorized that abstract, symbolic thinking evolved to help humans negotiate such classically male activities as hunting, tool making, and warfare, and eventually developed into spoken language. In Finding Our Tongues, Dean Falk overturns this established idea, offering a daring new theory that springs from a simple observation: parents all over the world, in all cultures, talk to infants by using baby talk or "Motherese." Falk shows how Motherese developed as a way of reassuring babies when mothers had to put them down in order to do work. The melodic vocalizations...
Scientists have long theorized that abstract, symbolic thinking evolved to help humans negotiate such classically male activities as hunting, tool mak...
Studies of brain evolution have moved rapidly in recent years, building on the pioneering research of Harry J. Jerison. This book provides state-of-the-art reviews of primate (including human) brain evolution. The volume is divided into two sections, the first offers new perspectives on the developmental, physiological, dietary, and behavioral correlates of brain enlargement. However, it has long been recognized that brains do not merely enlarge globally as they evolve, but that their cortical and internal organization also changes in a process known as reorganization. Species-specific...
Studies of brain evolution have moved rapidly in recent years, building on the pioneering research of Harry J. Jerison. This book provides state-of-th...
Two discoveries of early human relatives, one in 1924 and one in 2003, radically changed scientific thinking about our origins. Dean Falk, a pioneer in the field of human brain evolution, offers this fast-paced insider's account of these discoveries, the behind-the-scenes politics embroiling the scientists who found and analyzed them, and the academic and religious controversies they generated. The first is the Taung child, a two-million-year-old skull from South Africa that led anatomist Raymond Dart to argue that this creature had walked upright and that Africa held the key to the fossil...
Two discoveries of early human relatives, one in 1924 and one in 2003, radically changed scientific thinking about our origins. Dean Falk, a pioneer i...
Given the past decade's explosion of neurobiological and paleontologi cal data and their increasingly sophisticated analyses, interdisciplinary syntheses between these two broad disciplines are of value and interest to many different scientists. The collected papers of this volume will appeal to students of primate and hominid evolution, neuroscientists, sociobiolo gists, and other behaviorists who seek a better understanding of the substrates of primate, including human, behavior. Each species of living primates represents an endpoint in evolution, but comparative neurologists can produce...
Given the past decade's explosion of neurobiological and paleontologi cal data and their increasingly sophisticated analyses, interdisciplinary synthe...
In this unusual book an evolutionary anthropologist and her coauthor/granddaughter, who has Asperger syndrome, examine the emergence and spread of Asperger syndrome and other forms of high-functioning autism. Falk theorizes that many characteristics associated with Asperger syndrome are by-products of the evolution of advanced mental processing.
In this unusual book an evolutionary anthropologist and her coauthor/granddaughter, who has Asperger syndrome, examine the emergence and spread of Asp...
