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We are in a pandemic. COVID-19 infection threatens humanity with illness and death. But disease from this microbe is not the only hazard to human health and well-being. People around the globe have experienced months of isolation and have possibly more than a year of social distancing, both of which can have devastating effects on…

El antropólogo Agustín Fuentes advierte de la desaparición de rituales y gestos cotidianos que impliquen proximidad física e insta a preservar las relaciones sociales pese al aislamiento Atravesamos una pandemia. El COVID-19 nos amenaza a todos, pero la enfermedad provocada directamente por este microbio no es el único peligro para nuestra salud y nuestro bienestar.…

The Evolution of Belief Belief conjures up political fanaticism and blind religiosity.  But evolutionary anthropologist Agustín Fuentes argues that belief is also connected to our capacities to imagine, create, and change the world for the better. He reflects on why the ability to commit passionately and wholeheartedly to an idea is a central part of…

Agustín Fuentes compares three books on the origins, trajectory and implications of our group behaviour. Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies Edward O. Wilson Liveright (2019) The Human Swarm: How Our Societies Arise, Thrive, and Fall Mark W. Moffett Head of Zeus (2019) Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society Nicholas A. Christakis Little, Brown Spark (2019) Humans are animals,…

Steven Pinker wrote Enlightenment Now thinking he was making the case for “reason, science, humanism, and progress.” But instead produced a 556 page text filled with some interesting statistics, a few valid insights, a lot of naiveté, and a stunning lack of empathy. Let me be clear about a few things: I both practice and love science,…

What popular books get wrong about human evolution. Popular books about human evolution tell us why we are the way that we are. A broad swath of the public looks to such books to translate the enormity of information from scientific research into accessible, and engaging, narratives informing about human nature. When Albert Einstein cautioned…

EXCERPT Why have humans taken mammalian sex to a whole new level? For humans, sex is risky, socially complicated, and culturally loaded—but it’s almost always fun. David Williams BOOK EXCERPT The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional. Dutton, 2017. Googling “sex” in 2016 yields approximately 3.34 billion results in 0.29 seconds. That’s nearly four times…