Harvey Whitehouse

inheritance

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more

source_10558

By signing up, I confirm that I'm over 16. To find out what personal data we collect and how we use it, please visit our <a href="/company/about-us/notices/privacy-policy/">Privacy Policy</a>

Keep an eye out for a confirmation in your inbox

Stories, ideas and giveaways to help you spark young imaginations

source_10972

The latest books, activities and tips to help you grow little readers

source_10975

About us

About Us (Header 4)

john-le-carre-a-legacy-of-spies-960-2.jpg

Margaret Atwood

Richard Osman

Malorie Blackman

George Orwell

marian_keyes_mobile_320x200px.png

Elif Shafak

shonfaye

Authors (Header 3)

Books (Header 2)

Company

Features (Header 1)

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Inheritance

A bold and sweeping analysis that ranges widely through time, across geographies and through different kinds of human societies. A book of rare ambition and scope.

PETER FRANKOPAN, author of The Silk Roads

A compelling, thoughtful, nuanced, and ultimately hopeful new perspective on our history, present crises, and future potential . . . This book is a masterpiece &ndash; important, thought-provoking, and great fun to read.

This fascinating book combines ground-breaking research with compelling storytelling to reveal how humanity&rsquo;s deepest tendencies towards conforming, believing and belonging have profoundly shaped our many histories and current realities . . . Profoundly thought-provoking &ndash; dive in.

KATE RAWORTH, author of Doughnut Economics

Remarkably readable . . . A powerful argument that the behaviour change we need is more likely to occur if we make use of our evolved human nature, rather than seek to transcend it.

PETER SINGER, author of Animal Liberation

A profoundly important book, of breathtaking scope. Whitehouse shows how evolution sculpted our psychological make-up, how we overcame its limitations over the course of world history, and how we can wield this knowledge to face the challenges of the future. Full of deep insights into human nature, this is a work of compelling conviction by a master in the field.

An insightful and breathtaking exploration of humanity&rsquo;s evolutionary baggage that explains some of our species&rsquo; greatest successes and failures.

This lucid and original book is important not only as a guide to underlying dynamics in contemporary society but also as an exemplary interweaving of approaches from the natural and social sciences.

RICHARD WRANGHAM, author of Catching Fire

A brilliant synthesis of insights from psychology, anthropology, and big historical data analytics that throws penetrating light on the evolutionary trajectories of human societies, and on how we collectively can shape a better future for humanity.

If you spend a lot of time thinking the world seems to have gone mad, bad and dangerous, this thoughtful and thought-provoking book won't just help you work out why that might be &ndash; it will also help you see a better path forward.

KRISHNAN GURU-MURTHY, Channel 4 News presenter

A very powerful, provocative and inspiring analysis of the human condition which seeks to explain where our societies are going wrong today - and how to put them right. Whitehouse bravely takes an ambitious interdisciplinary view that captures the sweep of history, tackling topics ranging from social media and modern political polarization to ancient religious cults, nomadic societies and more. His arguments about the three core features shaping humans - conformity, religiosity and tribalism - are thought-provoking, and offer an excellent lens to frame events today. Compelling and highly readable, this book shows why anthropology matters.

GILLIAN TETT, Provost of King's College, Cambridge

The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World

Brought to you by Penguin. 
 
Homo sapiens is a maker of unnatural history. For countless millennia, evolution has shaped our behaviour. But over just a few millennia, that behaviour has reshaped the world: building sprawling cities, global faiths, states, and empires. Nature made humanity, and humanity remade nature. 
 
Here, one of the world's leading anthropologists reveals how our evolutionary past informed the birth and rise of global civilisation. Unveiling a visionary new way of studying human history - one that stunningly weaves together experimental psychology, anthropology and quantitative social science - Harvey Whitehouse uncovers the three evolutionary biases that shape our social behaviour: conformism, religiosity and tribalism. And he reveals how these biases were harnessed and extended to produce the greatest revolutions in human history, from the transition to agriculture to the rise of the first bureaucracies and organised religions. Above all, he argues that only by understanding our natural biases can we hope to survive the challenges of our unnatural present - from violent criminality to environmental meltdown. 
 
The result is a landmark study of the past and future of the world we made. It transforms our understanding of who we are and who we can be. 
 
©2024 Harvey Whitehouse (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Professor Harvey Whitehouse is Chair in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford. 
 
He is Director of Oxford’s world renowned Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion, which studies the social glue that binds societies together. In his work for the Centre, Whitehouse draws on insights from anthropology, neuroscience, history and psychology to explore why some societies come together and others fall apart. 
 
Whitehouse has worked in regions as diverse as Asia, Africa, South America, Australasia and Melanesia. It has taken him to some of the world's most important archaeological sites, brain-scanning facilities, and child psychology labs - as well as to the heart of some of the world's most embittered conflicts and extremist groups. 
 
He is also a founding director of Seshat, a vast database on human history enabling scholars and scientists to test different hypotheses about the rise and fall of large-scale societies across the globe in a more even-handed way than has ever been possible before.. 
 
In academic circles, Whitehouse is best known as one of the founders of the Cognitive Science of Religion, a highly influential approach to the study of religion. His theory of 'modes of religiosity' has been the subject of extensive discussion among anthropologists, historians, archaeologists, cognitive scientists and evolutionary theorists. 
 
Whitehouse's research has featured in Scientific American, New Scientist, Aeon, Pacific Standard, The Telegraph and The Guardian. He has delivered talks at the World Economic Forum and served as the Chief Consultant for a BBC Two documentary series, Extraordinary Rituals. He lives in Oxford.

Homo sapiens is a maker of unnatural history. For countless millennia, evolution has shaped our behaviour. But over just a few millennia, that behaviour has reshaped the world: building sprawling cities, global faiths, states, and empires. Nature made humanity, and humanity remade nature. 
 
Here, one of the world's leading anthropologists reveals how our evolutionary past informed the birth and rise of global civilisation. Unveiling a visionary new way of studying human history - one that stunningly weaves together experimental psychology, anthropology and quantitative social science - Harvey Whitehouse uncovers the three evolutionary biases that shape our social behaviour: conformism, religiosity and tribalism. And he reveals how these biases were harnessed and extended to produce the greatest revolutions in human history, from the transition to agriculture to the rise of the first bureaucracies and organised religions. Above all, he argues that only by understanding our natural biases can we hope to survive the challenges of our unnatural present - from violent criminality to environmental meltdown. 
 
The result is a landmark study of the past and future of the world we made. It transforms our understanding of who we are and who we can be.

Inheritance

Select a format:

Pre-order:

Summary

Reviews

About the author

Harvey Whitehouse

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter