Wilson .:. The Domestication of the Human Species

Wilson, Peter J.,
The Domestication of the Human Species. New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 1988. xvi, 201 Seiten mit Literaturverzeichnis und Register. Leinen mit Schutzumschlag. Grossoktav. 242 x 158 mm. 522 g

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Bestell-Nr.159933

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Wilson | Bio Evolution | Neolithic period | Anthropologie | Vorgeschichte | Fruehgeschichte | Domestication

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Domestication — living in permanent homes and settlements — began about 15,000 years ago during the Mesolithic period. In this exciting new book, the author of Man. The Promising Primate takes domestication as the starting point for his continued inquiry into human evolution. Peter J. Wilson believes that the most radical and far-reaching innovation in human development was this setIling down into a built environment, and he argues that il had a crucial effect on human psychology and social relations.
Wilson points out that when people began to live in permanent settlements they experienced for the first time fixed barriers to their sensory perceptions of one another. With this came a shift in the role of the senses, particularly vision, and Wilson speculates brilliantly on the implications and effects of this shift. He argues that the senses have played a far more active and instrumental role in human evolution than is generally recognized as fundamental as the instincts or the emotional drives.
With the support of fascinating ethnographic data, Wilson shows how the division of space into public and private areas by the construction of walls encourages tendencies to conceal and to display. This in turn leads to the development of secrecy, suspicion, and optical aggression, as well as to the institutionalizing of hospitality and neighborliness. Further, it promotes the display of wealth and power, as the house evolves into the grand palace and the grave into the elaborate monunnental tomb. This, suggests Wilson, is the beginning of power politics.
The insights of this book point the way toward amendments to social theories that will challenge the professional reader. These same insights and explanations will, for the general reader, offer an enriched understanding of human behavior and human history.

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