Penny Spikins's Books

Hidden Depths

The Origins of Human Connection

By: Penny Spikins

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Hidden Depths

The Origins of Human Connection

By: Penny Spikins

n Hidden Depths, Professor Penny Spikins explores how our emotional connections have shaped human ancestry. Focusing on three key transitions in human origins, Professor Spikins explains how the emotional capacities of our early ancestors evolved in response to ecological changes, much like similar changes in other social mammals. For each transition, dedicated chapters examine evolutionary pressures, responses in changes in human emotional capacities and the archaeological evidence for human social behaviours. Starting from our earliest origins, in Part One, Professor Spikins explores how after two million years ago, movement of human ancestors into a new ecological niche drove new types of collaboration, including care for vulnerable members of the group. Emotional adaptations lead to cognitive changes, as new connections based on compassion, generosity, trust and inclusion also changed our relationship to material things. Part Two explores a later key transition in human emotional capacities occurring after 300,000 years ago. At this time changes in social tolerance allowed ancestors of our own species to further reach out beyond their local group and care about distant allies, making human communities resilient to environmental changes. An increasingly close relationship to animals, and even to cherished possessions, appeared at this time, and can be explained through new human vulnerabilities and ways of seeking comfort and belonging. Lastly, Part Three focuses on the contrasts in emotional dispositions arising between ourselves and our close cousins, the Neanderthals. Neanderthals are revealed as equally caring yet emotionally different humans, who might, if things had been different, have been in our place today. This new narrative breaks away from traditional views of human evolution as exceptional or as a linear progression towards a more perfect form. Instead, our evolutionary history is situated within similar processes occurring in other mammals, and explained as one in which emotions, rather than ‘intellect’, were key to our evolutionary journey. Moreover, changes in emotional capacities and dispositions are seen as part of differing pathways each bringing strengths, weaknesses and compromises. These hidden depths provide an explanation for many of the emotional sensitivities and vulnerabilities which continue to influence our world today.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

472

Publisher

White Rose University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1912482339

ISBN 13

9781912482337

Hidden Depths

The Origins of Human Connection

By: Penny Spikins

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Hidden Depths

The Origins of Human Connection

By: Penny Spikins

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

472

Publisher

White Rose University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1912482339

ISBN 13

9781912482337

How Compassion Made Us Human

The Evolutionary Origins of Tenderness, Trust and Morality

By: Penny Spikins

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

How Compassion Made Us Human

The Evolutionary Origins of Tenderness, Trust and Morality

By: Penny Spikins

Our capacity to care about the wellbeing of others, whether they are close family or strangers, can appear to be unimportant in today's competitive societies. However, in this volume Penny Spikins argues that compassion lies at the heart of what makes us human. She takes us on a journey from the earliest stone age societies two million years ago to the lives of Neanderthals in Ice Age Europe, using archaeological evidence to illustrate the central role that emotional connections had in human evolution. Simple acts of kindness left to us from millions of years ago provide evidence for how social emotions and morality evolved, and how our capacity to reach out beyond ourselves into the lives of others allowed us to work together for a common good, and form the basis for human success.

Average ratings

N/A