Customer Reviews

Braindance: New Discoveries about Human Origins and Brain Evolution

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This is a very readable book providing a gentle overview of brain functions and their possible evolutionary roots. A great deal of the book concentrates on the discovery and study a endocasts from a small sample of primates. This leads on to an inconclusive discussion about the bipedal development and its relationship to the evolutionary brain. The human ability to dance, or more precisely the human ability to lay down the motor memories assiociated with dance movements, while notionally the subject of the book receives much less attention than the title suggests. The author's main point is that only humans dance, and this is sufficiently distinctive in evolutionary terms to merit much wider appreciation. The flaw in this argument, as I see it, is that dance itself has evolved across time and society. It is unlikely the waltz could have been developed by head hunters, and equally unlikely that it could have emerged today. The cultural context is critical to appreciating the type of dance that emerged. For instance, humans run differently than primates, we swim and eat differently too. Should all these areas not also receive special attention? I am also aware that young animals often display 'dance like' moves when practising hunting. For example, kittens will often practice stalking and prancing with older cats. The arguments in the book about the special nature of dance, I didn't find convincing. This was not a major downside to the book, simply a hypothesis that I couldn't accept. The downside of the book were the anecdotes that related yet another professional spat between the author and a rival colleague. A sense of friction with other colleagues can be conveyed without the degree of elaboration employed here. The anecdotes interrupted the narrative. Frankly I found them jarring and thought they reflected badly on the book as a whole.

This is an excellent book, and like all good scientific works the author has her own particular thesis, the "cranial radiator." Standing upright on the hot African savanna reduced the overall heat uptake of our ancestors' bodies by exposing less of them to the sun, and changes in cerebral "plumbing" were also required that may have added redundant capabilities later exapted as human intellect. There is a lightness of touch to "Braindance" evidenced by the author's photo on the back cover, which is actually a monkey, purportedly an "ancestral portrait." There is also an excellent photo of Glen Conroy doing research in Chad, he is holding an M16! These are the Indiana Jones's of anthropology.

The human fossil record is primarily one of skulls and teeth and this expertly written account of past and present brain anatomy is elegant, timely, and significant.

Now in a newly revised and expanded edition, Braindance examines what science has to say about the evolution of the human brain and the origins of humanity as a species. Looking at what the most recent discoveries have to say about male brains versus female brains, and the difference - or resemblance - that human brains have with regard to primate brains, and much, much more, Braindance strives to explain what truly distinguishes human beings in terms as accessible to lay readers as it is to field professionals and academic scholarship. Information-packed and highly recommended.