Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures

✍ Scribed by Harris, Marvin

• Book ID: 107818427
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: en-US
• Weight: 240 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9780307801234

✦ Synopsis

In this brilliant and profound study the distinguished American anthropologist Marvin Harris shows how the endless varieties of cultural behavior -- often so puzzling at first glance -- can be explained as adaptations to particular ecological conditions. His aim is to account for the evolution of cultural forms as Darwin accounted for the evolution of biological forms: to show how cultures adopt their characteristic forms in response to changing ecological modes.

"[A] magisterial interpretation of the rise and fall of human cultures and societies."

-- Robert Lekachman, Washington Post Book World

"Its persuasive arguments asserting the primacy of cultural rather than genetic or psychological factors in human life deserve the widest possible audience."

-- Gloria Levitas The New Leader

"[An] original and...urgent theory about the nature of man and at the reason that human cultures take so many diverse shapes."

-- The New...