Second Nature
Economic Origins of Human Evolution

This book explores how market forces and economics can help answer fundamental questions of human evolution.

Haim Ofek (Author)

9780521625340, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 25 October 2001

268 pages, 15 b/w illus. 1 table
22.8 x 15.3 x 1.6 cm, 0.452 kg

'… the boldness, coherence, and sweep of the book are impressive … an exhilarating and interesting read that raises powerful questions about how humans got here and how we should be studied.' Science

Was exchange an early agent of human evolution or is it merely an artefact of modern civilisation? Spanning two million years of human evolution, this book explores the impact of economics on human evolution and natural history. The theory of evolution by natural selection has always relied in part on progress in areas of science outside biology. By applying economic principles at the borderlines of biology, Haim Ofek shows how some of the outstanding issues in human evolution, such as the increase in human brain size and the expansion of the environmental niche humans occupied, can be answered. He identifies distinct economic forces at work, beginning with the transition from the feed-as-you-go strategy of primates, through hunter-gathering and the domestication of fire to the development of agriculture. This highly readable book will inform and intrigue general readers and those in fields such as evolutionary biology and psychology, economics, and anthropology.

Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
Part I. Bioeconomics: 2. Exchange in human and nonhuman societies
3. Classical economics and classical Darwinism
4. Evolutionary implications of division of labour
5. The feeding ecology
6. The origins of nepotistic exchange
7. Baboon speciation versus human specialization
Part II. Paleoeconomics: 8. Departure from the feed-as-you-go strategy
9. The origins of market exchange
10. Domestication of fire in relation to market exchange
11. The Upper Paleolithic and other creative explosions
12. Transition to agriculture: the limiting factor
13. Transition to agriculture: the facilitating factor
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Human biology [PSX], Evolution [PSAJ], Economics [KC], Physical anthropology [JHMP]