Evolution of social behaviour patterns in primates and man : a joint discussion meeting of the Royal Society and the British Academy /

It is difficult to determine the success of the 1995 symposium on which this volume is based, as its goals were never made clear. Neither the introduction by sociologist Runciman nor the epilogue by evolutionary biologist Maynard Smith includes the usual context-setting discussion. The reader is left to guess that the plan was to integrate the archaeology and sociology of the British Academy with paleontology and ethological primatology from the Royal Society in order to better understand behavioral evolution. This type of integration is rare in individual papers such as the 12 that make up this book, and there is no record of the interactions that presumably characterized this "discussion meeting." Instead, there are a dozen interesting (sometimes fascinating) papers that might well have been turned into a journal special issue covering such topics as primate sociality, group size, communication, and cultural variation; evolutionary psychology; human evolutionary history as related to environmental adaptation, and to bipedalism and the origin of language; the archeology of modern human origins, language, and sociality; modern human behavioral ecology; and the genetics of language disorder. Weak editing and lack of sharp focus lessen the potential impact of these contributions. Graduate students; faculty. E. Delson; CUNY Herbert H. Lehman College