Inheritance
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  • Published: 13 June 2024
  • ISBN: 9781529152241
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368

Inheritance

The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World

Formats & editions
Paperback
10 Jun 2025
EBook
13 Jun 2024
Audiobook
13 Jun 2024
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‘Insightful and breathtaking . . . Explains some of our species’ greatest successes and failures.’ Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens

Why are humans everywhere prone to believe in ghosts?
How might our tendency to imitate one another be contributing to the climate catastrophe?
And does our deep evolutionary past impel us to vote for strongmen?

In 1987, Harvey Whitehouse went to live with an indigenous community deep in the Papua New Guinea rainforest. His experiences there convinced him that, far from being wildly different, humans are fundamentally alike: their beliefs and behaviours rooted in a set of evolutionary urges that can be found in any society, anywhere.

Here, Whitehouse roves across twelve millennia and five continents to uncover how these evolved urges have both shaped and been reshaped by human history. Along the way, he shows that this ancient inheritance does not just hold the key to explaining the modern world – but perhaps also to changing it.
  • Published: 13 June 2024
  • ISBN: 9781529152241
  • Imprint: Penguin
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 368
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About the author

Harvey Whitehouse

Professor Harvey Whitehouse is Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and Director of the Centre for the Study of Social Cohesion. One of the world’s leading experts on the evolutionary basis of human culture, Whitehouse has spent four decades studying some of the most extreme groups on earth: from the battlefields of the Arab Spring, via millenarian cults on Pacific islands, to violent football fans in South America. Along the way, he has undertaken research at some of the world’s most important archaeological sites, brain-scanning facilities, and child psychology labs – all with a view to pioneering a new, scientific approach to the study of human society. Whitehouse’s work has featured in the Telegraph, Guardian, Scientific American and New Scientist, and he has delivered talks at the World Economic Forum and the United Nations. He lives in Oxford.

Praise for 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 . . . A masterpiece – important, thought-provoking and great fun to read.

KATE FOX, author of Watching the English

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

KATE RAWORTH, author of Doughnut Economics