The Runaway Brain: The Evolution of Human Uniqueness.

by Christopher Wills
Review by: Henry Harpending
The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 113-114
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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MARCH 1995 NEW BIOLOGICALBOOKS 113

benefit versus harm, which is always a matter of

HUMAN BIOLOGY & HEALTH
DARWINIsM APPLIED: EVOLUTIONARYPATHS TO So-
CIAL GOALS.Human Evolution, Behavior, and Intelli-
gence.
By John H. Beckstrom, Consulting Editor. Seymour tunity to establish their innocence by this method.
W. Itzkoff: Praeger, Westport(Connecticut).$45.00. A recent media report claimed that approximately
vii + 173 p.; ill.; index. ISBN: 0-275-94568-5.
1993.
Those of us who are wary of mergers between sci-
ence and politics may cringe at the title of this
book, but the author assures us that he does not
advocate particular social goals; he merely shows
how evolutionary science may be applied to them,
and he is true to his word. The book is written
for a general audience and, as such, is eminently
readable. Furthermore, Beckstrom knows his field
and moves easily between theory and pragmatics.
My problem with the work, however, is that
although the theories are creatively applied, they
are insufficiently established for the kinds of ex-
trapolations Beckstrom offers. For example, he cites
the Westermark theory-that continuous contact
between siblings as children inhibits later sexual
attraction-as the basis for his recommendation
that, "to discourage sexual relations between young-
sters after puberty: Take whateversteps are practical
to keeptheyoungstersin closeproximity to one anotherin This is an engaging book about human evolution
theirprepubertalyears" (p. 34, italics his). Evidence
for the Westermark theory, however, derives solely
from studies of nonrelated children who are raised
together, and the one attempt to apply the theory
to the biological, nuclear family (published after
Beckstrom's book) failed to find any relationship
between early proximity and postpubertal sexual be-
havior.
As a further example, Beckstrom proposes that
threat of castration, which represents "personal re-
productive death" (p. 62), would be particularly
effective as a deterrent to rape. He bases this notion are treated in detail. The first chapter is about
on sociobiological theories of the origins of rape
as an evolved reproductive strategy. Statistics indi-
cate, however, that most rapists commit nonsexual
crimes as well, which puts into question the parsi-
mony of reproductive strategy theories as opposed
to the concept that rape is a manifestation of gen-
eral criminal tendencies.
Beckstrom would probably argue that all scien-
tific theories are tentative, but nevertheless they
are applied in such fields as medicine and engi-
neering in the absence of more effective means to
attain goals. Here the question is one of potential
personal values. I find no foreseeable harm in most
of Beckstrom's proposals, but there are exceptions.
For example, Bevc and Silverman found a greater
incidence of prepubertal sexual activity between
siblings who reported more day-to-day contact in
younger years (which might distress some parents
who have followed Beckstrom's advice). In regard
to rape, a coterie of defense lawyers is currently
providing rapists convicted prior to the general
usage of DNA matching techniques with an oppor-
one-third of convicted rapists who have come forth
to be tested have been cleared, which might give
us pause in considering notions about involuntary
castration.
On a positive note, the public has been cau-
tioned for generations by detractors of Darwinism
about possibilities for socially reprehensible appli-
cations, and it may be propitious that they are
informed of the potential value of the theory in
reaching goals generally regarded as more merito-
rious.
IRWIN SILVERMAN, Psychology,YorkUniversity, To-
ronto, Ontario, Canada
THE RUNAWAY BRAIN: THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN
UNIQUENESS.
By ChristopherWills. Basic Books,New York.$25.00.
xxv + 358 p. + 19 pl.; ill.; index. ISBN: 0-465-
03131-5. 1993.
written for educated laypeople and for profession-
als in other fields. It is divided into sections on
major issues and debates in human evolution, the
fossil evidence of human ancestors, genes and gene
action, and neuroscience. Although the title of the
book and the blurb on the jacket both suggest that
brain evolution will be a central theme, I found
that there was little discernible focus on this or on
any other particular topic.
An attractive feature of the presentation is that
personalities and the historical context of issues
mitochondrial Eve; it focuses on the history of work
with mitochondrial DNA and on changing inter-
pretations of the apparent recent coalescent. Fol-
lowing is a chapter about Coon's Origin of Races
and the reception that it received from Dobzhan-
sky and other evolutionary biologists, and then a
chapter on the involvement of Catholic clergy in
human evolutionary research. Later there are par-
ticularly good treatments of the work of the Lea-
keys in paleontology and of Muller, Dobzhansky,
and Kimura in genetics.
This is not a book for professionals. The chatty

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 114 THE QUARTERLYREVIEW OF BIOLOGY
style leads to irritating generalizations and careless
assertions. After discussing the diversity of austra-
lopithecines from the Pliocene and Pleistocene, the
author casually dismisses all concern with species
differences among them by suggesting that we should
just think of all of them as our ancestors. His treat-
ment of the human mtDNA coalescent is just as
careless, suggesting that if the true date of the coa-
lescent is a million years ago that this would sup-
port the multiregional origin of modern humans.
Wills has adopted the worst kind of patronizing
noble savage view of low technology human societies,
suggesting, for example, that Australian Aborigines
have preserved a group memory of climatic changes
from 15,000 years ago in their songs (p. 147). On
page 307 he compares the "elegant language skills"
of Khoisan speakers from southern Africa with the
"slurred excuse for speech, brutalized by television,
that passes for language in much of the United
States." I speak one of these Khoisan languages
and cannot identify any particular elegant skill in-
volved in its production. There are William Buck-
leys and there are Archie Bunkers in every society.
Worst of all, most of this book could have been
written in the early 1970s. The evolutionary biol-
ogy is strongly reminiscent of those years, with a
lot of loose talk about variability and evolutionary
potential and complexity. It is as if the revolution
in behavioral biology that was just getting under
way then, and is now central to most serious an-
thropology, had never happened.
In summary, this is a difficult book to review.
I enjoyed all of it; I learned things that I had not
known before. But I cannot honestly recommend
it for anyone. It is too breezy, chatty, and careless
for professionals, and it does not describe the field
of human evolutionary studies as it now is prac-
ticed, so it is not a good choice for interested lay-
people.
HENRY HARPENDING, A nthropology,Pennsylvania
State University, University Park, Pennsylvania
NAMING OUR ANCESTORS: AN ANTHOLOGY OF HOM-
INID TAXONOMY.
By W. Eric Meikle and Sue TaylorParker. Waveland
Press, ProspectHeights (Illinois). $12.95 (paper).
x + 254 p.; ill.; no index. ISBN: 0-88133-799-4.
1994.
Taxonomic disagreements generally reflect differ-
ent theories of human evolution, and contrasting
species names commonly signal taxonomic disagree-
ments. It was with this in mind that the editors
compiled the present book. It reprints 19 papers,
15 published between 1864 and 1986, where one
or more authors suggest a new hominid species,
and 4 published between 1950 and 1986, where an
influential author surveys or critiques fossil hominid
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
VOLUME 70
taxonomy. The editors' goal was to give students a
sense of how paleoanthropology has itself evolved.
The editors introduce the volume with a lucid
exposition of how taxonomists formulate and for-
malize species names, and they preface each re-
printed paper with thoughtful commentary that
will help nonspecialists in particular. The fifteen
species they chose to include (Homo neanderthalensis
King, 1864; AnthropopithecuserectusDubois, 1892;
Homo heidelbergensisSchoetensack, 1908; Homo rho-
desiensisWoodward, 1921; Australopithecusafricanus
Dart, 1925; ParanthropusrobustusBroom, 1938; Par-
anthropuscrassidensBroom, 1949; Telanthropuscapen-
sis Broom and Robinson, 1949; Meganthropusafri-
canus Weinert, 1950; Zinjanthropus boisei Leakey,
1959; Homo habilis Leakey, Tobias and Napier,
1964; ParaustralopithecusaethiopicusArambourg and
Coppens, 1968; Homo ergasterGroves and Mazaik,
1975; AustralopithecusafarensisJohanson, White and
Coppens, 1978; and PithecanthropusrudolfensisAlex-
eev, 1986) comprise all those that are currently
fashionable and some that may become so, albeit
sometimes transferred to different genera.
Arguably, the book would be more useful for
teaching if it included one or two essays illustrating
taxonomic practice in the early 1990s, addressing,
for example, current views on the taxonomy of the
australopithecines, on their relationship to Homo,
or on the mode of modern human origins. It is
perhaps also unfortunate that the editors or the
publisher chose not to include an index. Both stu-
dents and professional paleoanthropologists, how-
ever, will surely welcome such a reasonably priced
compendium of historically significant, new spe-
cies suggestions, four of which appear in English
for the first time.
RICHARD G. KLEIN, Anthropologyand Human Biol-
ogy, Stanford University, Stanford, California
THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR. Bibliog-
raphies and Indexes in Anthropology,Number 7.
Editor-in-Chief:Hiram Caton,AssociateEditors.Frank
K. Salter andJ. M. G. van der Dennen. Greenwood
Press, Westport(Connecticut).$95.00. xvi + 575 p.;
author and subject indexes. ISBN: 0-313-
27897-0. 1993.
ADDICTIVE BEHAVIORS IN WOMEN. Drug and Alcohol
Abuse Reviews, Volume5.
Edited by Ronald R. Watson. Humana Press, Totowa
(New Jersey). $69.50. x + 526 p.; ill.; index.
ISBN: 0-89603-257-4. 1994.
This volume addresses a wide range of social, psy-
chological, and biological facets of addictive behav-
iors in women, including personality traits, family
life, dieting, parenting, sexuality, and metabolic