Human Characteristics: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Mind and Kind

Every once in a while, we have to reconsider the perennial questions concerning human nature: What are the special human behaviours, social practices, and psychological structures that makes us particularly human? The field of evolution, psychology and cognitive science is the most expanding, inter-disciplinary area for the time being, uniting different sciences under the same evolutionary paradigm and keeping them occupied by the same eternal questions stated above. Relevant data and theoretical considerations are pilling up, but an overview is needed. To facilitate this a large inter-disciplinary conference entitled 'Human Mind - Human Kind' was held at University of Aarhus, Denmark. More than 100 experts presented their latest research, and after careful selection, 20 of these contributions have found their way to this volume. The studies fall into three well defined sections: Evolution and Cognition - Comparative and Developmental Perspectives, Human Sociality, Morality & Religiosity, Human Sexuality and Mating Strategies. Specifying the differences between our own species and the rest of the animal world always provokes debate. But these demarcations simply have to be drawn once and again. They focus attention and stimulate research, exactly because they provoke and challenge other researchers to take up the glove and prove us wrong.