The Others: How Animals Made Us Human (Paperback)

by Paul Shepard (Author) "THE HUMAN MIND is the result of a long series of interactions with other animals..." (more)
Key Phrases: primal peoples, primal societies, animal symbolism, North America, Jane Ellen Harrison, Mary Midgley (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Paul Shepard was an ecologist with a Yale Ph.D. who spent more than 40 years studying human evolution. With The Others: How Animals Made Us Human Shepard, who died in 1996, wrote a masterful book about the relationship we've always had with animals. The idea behind the book, that humans have always depended on animals, and that the dependence has greatly affected what we are, seems simple at first. But Shepard combined prodigious scholarship with eloquent writing to produce a very entertaining and informative look at that special relationship. Among the topics covered in The Others are the role animals have played in myth and folklore, the uses to which humans have put animals, and even the role of animals in the cartoons of Gary Larson.

From Publishers Weekly
In this provocative, illuminating volume, Shepard examines the role of animals in human history from the Pleistocene to the present. He argues that anthropomorphism binds our connection to the rest of the natural world. Noting that narratives in which animals are protagonists occur in all kinds of societies and in different forms at all stages of life, Shepard (Thinking Animals) analyzes fairy tales (child), folktales (juvenile) and myths (adult), concluding that the last is the most revealing source of information about how people relate to the nonhuman world. He reviews the sources of biblical natural history and parable, and he discusses the "nightmare of domestication." Shepard argues that the benefits to other species of being domestic are fictitious; they are merely slaves. Additional topics include animals in language, the cult of the cow and the rise of pastoralism, augury and the biblical zoo. Illustrations not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Island Press; 1 edition (March 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559634340
• ISBN-13: 978-1559634342
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #55,281 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #15 in	Books > Outdoors & Nature > Ecology > Animal Rights
  #59 in	Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Biological Sciences > Zoology

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A thoughtful commentary on how Animals influence us, December 17, 1999

By	diomedea "dio-sam" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

Paul Shepherd was a great thinker, and I regret that I only became aware of his work very recently. His thesis throughout most of his work is that civilization as we know it is the true enemy of human beings. We have insulated ourselves from nature and from our teachers the animals. I do not always agree with his point of view, but he presents his ideas in such a way as to allow you to grasp and test them, and certainly not to shove them down your throat or tell you that this is the absolute truth. He really gets you to think.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shepard shreds all, November 17, 2007

By	Anarcho-Savagist (Milwaukee) - See all my reviews

This is one of Shepard's most complete, potent and piercing works. The descriptions of "dense" from other reviewers is a lesson in a culture of boredom that sweeps modernity to the core. In a subject that needs to be articulated so well to affectively challenge the entire foundation of domestication/civilization, you best be prepared to read and absorb so the same rudimentary, arrogant ideologies don't keep appearing time after time, even into levels of academia.

Chapters like "Hounding Nature: The Nightmares of Domestication" cut straight through the bone on our exclusive love for dogs and horses as "man's best friend".

Easily one of the most important philosophers for the future of humanity, who was way "ahead" and "behind" his time.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars To understand animals is to understand yourself, May 1, 2005

By	Robert Schmidt (Honolulu, HI & Logan, UT USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Paul Shepard's book, The Others: how animals made us human, is a thoughtful analysis of how animals played a role in determining who and what we are as human animals. As in discussions of religion and politics, you will not agree with everything Professor Shepard writes. However, you will agree that he has developed a credible case that you cannot understand people, whether 10,000 years ago or today, without a better understanding of how Homo erectus and Homo sapiens interacted with both food and predatory animals 100,000 or 1,000,000 years ago. It will make you think, and that, not manipulation, is Professor Shepard's goal.