Cantitate/Preț
Produs
Total produse
Vezi coșul
The Singing Neanderthals de Steven Mithen

The Singing Neanderthals

Autor Steven Mithen
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 2 mar 2006

A fascinating and incisive examination of our language instinct from award-winning science writer Steven Mithen.

Along with the concepts of consciousness and intelligence, our capacity for language sits right at the core of what makes us human. But while the evolutionary origins of language have provoked speculation and impassioned debate, music has been neglected if not ignored. Like language it is a universal feature of human culture, one that is a permanent fixture in our daily lives.

In THE SINGING NEANDERTHALS, Steven Mithen redresses the balance, drawing on a huge range of sources, from neurological case studies through child psychology and the communication systems of non-human primates to the latest paleoarchaeological evidence.

The result is a fascinating and provocative work and a succinct riposte to those, like Steven Pinker, who have dismissed music as a functionless and unimportant evolutionary byproduct.

Citește tot Restrânge

Toate formatele și edițiile

Toate formatele și edițiile Preț Express
Paperback (2) 7520 lei  3-5 săpt. +4065 lei  10-14 zile
  Orion Publishing Group – 2 mar 2006 7520 lei  3-5 săpt. +4065 lei  10-14 zile
  Harvard University Press – 30 sep 2007 18562 lei  3-5 săpt.

Preț: 7520 lei

Preț vechi: 9677 lei
-22% Nou

Puncte Express: 113
Preț estimativ în valută:
1439€ • 1493$ • 1203£

Carte disponibilă

Livrare economică 22 februarie-08 martie
Livrare express 11-15 februarie pentru 5064 lei

 Adaugă în coș

Wish list
Gift list
Am citit!
Adaugă în listă
Preluare comenzi: 021 569.72.76

Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780753820513
ISBN-10: 075382051X
Pagini: 384
Ilustrații: Illustrations
Dimensiuni: 136 x 216 x 24 mm
Greutate: 0.46 kg
Editura: Orion Publishing Group
Locul publicării:London, United Kingdom

Notă biografică

Steven Mithen is Professor of Early Prehistory and Pro Vice Chancellor at theUniversity of Reading.

Recenzii

Why should music be so important to us? Steven Mithen begins his task with a detailed analysis of music and musical ability, drawing on musicology, psychology and neurobiology to build a comprehensive and erudite picture of music's capacity to move us...This is a long-overdue book, which approaches human evolution from an intriguing as well as entertaining angle. -- R. I. M. Dunbar Times Literary Supplement 20050728 Mithen draws on archaeological record and current research on neurology and genetics to explain how and why humans think, talk and make music the way they do. If it sounds impenetrably academic, it isn't: Mithen acts as a friendly guide to the troves of data on the evolution of man (and myriad sub-mysteries of the mind, music, speech and cognition), translating specialist material into an engrossing narrative casual readers will appreciate...Mithen's expertise in the science and history of his subject is combined with a passion for music that makes this book enjoyable and fascinating. Publishers Weekly 20060227 Mithen has many fascinating suggestions about how the circumstances of early hominid life on the African savanna may have provoked changes in anatomy and improved the range and precision of communication...By bringing music to the fore, Mithen remedies earlier neglect and offers his readers the most perspicacious portrait of the role of communication among our remote predecessors that I have ever encountered. That is a great accomplishment...Mithen's book, in short, seems destined to become a landmark in the way experts and amateurs alike seek to understand the character and evolutionary importance of hominid and early human communication...[The Singing Neanderthals] offers a learned, imaginative overview of the most important and most elusive dimension of the real but unrecorded past: i.e., how communication among our predecessors changed their lives, sustained their communities, and promoted their survival. No one has previously undertaken that task so well. -- William H. McNeill New York Review of Books 20060427 With a fascinating blend of neurology, anatomy, archaeology, developmental psychology and musicology, Mithen seeks the source of our propensity for making music, a universal human feature that has been strangely neglected compared with the origin of language. -- Blake Edgar Scientific American Among the most dicey academic inquiries are the ones that deal with the origin of human consciousness. Faced with difficulties of such daunting scope, Steven Mithen remains undaunted. In his 1996 book, The Prehistory of the Mind, he argued that both the origins of thought and the origins of human language are natural outcomes of evolution. But according to the first chapter of Mithen's latest work, The Singing Neanderthals, that story was incomplete. What it neglected was the central role of music in the psychosocial makeup of our species...'Without music,' Mithen writes, 'the prehistoric past is just too quiet to be believed'...Thus, Mithen speculates, humanity might have developed much as the individual does: music first, then language. From an evolutionary standpoint, music would not only help ensure the well-being of the individual, but also the cohesiveness of the group. Calling on primate studies, Mithen likens group music-making to grooming, an activity that evokes feelings of contentment and belonging...Taken as a look at the natural history of music, Mithen's book is thoughtful and certainly entertaining. -- Laurence A. Marschall Natural History 20061001 The Singing Neanderthals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body by Steven Mithen is a book that has you making up your own theories about how grunts became speech and songs. -- Doris Lessing Granta 20081209