Mixed Messages
Subtitle: Cultural and Genetic Inheritance in the Constitution of Human Society
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 368
ISBN-13: 9780226240862
Subjects: Nature and nurture; Heredity; Behavior genetics; Sociobiology
Description: As social and symbolic animals - animals with language and systems of signs - humans are informed by two different kinds of heritage, one biological, the other cultural. Scholars have tended to study our genetic and symbolic lineages separately, but in recent years some have begun to explore them together, offering a 'dual inheritance theory.' In this book, Robert A. Paul offers an entirely new and original consideration of our dual inheritance to date, going deep inside an extensive ethnographic record to outline a fascinating relationship between our genetic codes and symbolic systems.