International Journal of Primatology, Vol. 20, No.

2, 1999

BOOK REVIEW
Evolution of Social Behaviour Patterns in Primates and Man. Edited by W. G.
Runciman, John Maynard Smith, and R. I. M. Dunbar, Oxford University
Press, New York, NY, 1997, vi + 297 pp., $48.00 (cloth).

Reviewed by Vicki Bentley-Condit.1

The Evolution of Social Behaviour Patterns in Primates and Man is derived from
papers presented at a Royal Society/British Academy meeting held in 1995. It is an
excellent collection of essays exploring, the evolution of social behavior. It contains
works that cross disciplinary lines. Included are twelve papers, an introduction to
the volume by Runciman, and concluding remarks by Maynard Smith. The only
real shortcoming of the book is that the essays appear to be arranged in a somewhat
haphazard manner. The diversity of approaches and viewpoints is both a strength
and a weakness of this volume. While it allows the reader to see how various
researchers are approaching the topic, it makes the book difficult to pigeon-hole
for classroom use. While it might be appropriate for an interdisciplinary upper-
level seminar on the evolution of social behavior, it would be difficult to use in a
more focused lower-level human evolution, or primatology, or archaeology course.
However, most will find it a welcome addition to their collections.
Four essays focus on nonhuman primates. Van Schaik explores infanticide
as a force selecting for male-female associations or modifying female-female
relationships or both. Dunbar presents a general model of primate group size de-
termination by examining the interactions of maximum permissible group size
(resources availability), minimum permissible size (predation), and cognitive con-
straints which he sees as having the potential to allow us to explore the social
systems of both extant and extinct primate species. Cheney and Seyfarth analyze
function and intentionality in female baboon vocalizations and find that they ap-
pear to lack the ability to take account of the listener's mental state. Finally, Boesch
inquires into the emergence of chimpanzee cultures and proposes that the stabil-
ity of chimpanzee environments and our relative dearth of information on wild

1 Department of Anthropology, Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa, 50112.

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populations both contribute to the reported rarity of chimpanzee cultural behav-

iors. These four essays combined examine some of the major issues in primate
socioecology—group size, social relationships, the mind, and culture.
The essay by Boyd and Richerson bridges the gap between humans and
nonhuman primates by exploring the rareness of cultural evolution across species.
They suggest that cumulative cultural evolution—behaviors that no individual
could invent alone—depends on the capacity for observational learning and can
only evolve when there are substantial benefits to observational learning over
individual learning.
Upon crossing the bridge, we are presented with five essays which deal specif-
ically with human evolution. Tooby and Cosmides focus upon adaptations for al-
truism in the "environment of evolutionary adaptedness." They explore friendships
and how altruism could have been selected in the absence of reciprocation through
Banker's Paradox scenarios. Foley examines eight key events and time periods in
our evolutionary history using a phylogenetic approach to argue that male kin-
bonding and expensive offspring were key, and virtually simultaneous, factors in
human evolution. Mithen explores the cognitive domains of Lower and Middle
Paleolithic humans through archaeological inference and contends that early hu-
mans possessed domain specific mentality or intelligences which they were unable
to integrate. Mellars focuses on the emergence of modern humans in Europe and
contends that there was a revolution then similar in scale and consequence to the
Neolithic Revolution. Finally, Aiello analyzes the relationship between terrestri-
ality, bipedalism and the origin of language arguing that our language capabilities
are the outcome of both social and biological adaptations to terrestrialism and
bipedalism. These five essays examine both theory and archaeological evidence
in their efforts to understand our evolutionary past.
The two remaining essays center upon modern human populations.
Borgerhoff Mulder examines men's marriage strategies among modern Kipsigis of
rural Kenya. She shows how their strategies changed in the 1980's—consistent with
what would be predicted by an optimality model—based upon changing socioeco-
logical conditions. Gopnik et al. explore a genetic language impairment—Specific
Language Impairment—in English, Japanese, and Greek children and show that
even though humans appear to possess a language instinct, when something goes
wrong, acquisition of language becomes very difficult. These two essays explore
some of the same issues discussed by other contributors as they pertain to non-
human primates and hominids. Accordingly, they bring to the forefront the links
between the various fields represented.
As can be seen from the above descriptions, each of the essays in this volume
address some piece of the human social evolution puzzle. Runciman (1996, p. 7)
states in the introduction, that the "...interdisciplinary co-operation. . . exemplified
by (these) papers. . . (may) turn out to be as important as the old 'new synthesis'
which integrated evolutionary theory with population genetics." I recommend that
you read this volume and judge for yourself.