Dominion / Edition 1

by Niles Eldredge

Overview

Overpopulation, depletion of natural resources, hunting of nonhuman species to extinction: paleontologist Niles Eldredge questions the long term survival of humans, given our propensity for living beyond our ecological means. In Dominion he reviews the relation between biological and cultural evolution, showing how the agricultural revolution freed humans from dependence on local ecosystems and allowed us to assert our dominion, as the Christian Bible has it, over the beasts of the field. Unless we quickly change our homocentric ways, we'll irretrievably destroy our own habitat.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520208452
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	05/29/1997
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	190
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Niles Eldredge is a curator in the Department of Invertebrates at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Among his books is Reinventing Darwin: The Great Debate at the High Table of Evolutionary Theory (1995).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Foreword
Beyond Nature-Nurture

1
Human Futures
2
Nurturing Nature
3
The Way We Were
4
Becoming Human and Stepping Out
5
The Way We Are
6
Fashioning the Future

Afterword
A New Story

Index

Editorial Reviews

Some 10,000 years ago, declares Eldredge, humans invented agriculture and became the first species to live beyond the confines of a local ecosystem. Ever since, notes the author, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, people have ignored, exploited or trashed their natural surroundings, living as though self-sufficient and detached from nature. Mass extinction of nonhuman species, loss of biodiversity, despoliation of the environment and runaway population growth are among the consequences confronting us, and solving them, Eldredge argues, will require a recognition that we are the first global species: ``The whole earth has become our local ecosystem.'' This refreshingly succinct report charts human interaction with the environment from the first toolmakers of 2.5 million years ago to the three distinct migrations of Homo species out of Africa, which, Eldredge believes, took place within the last million years. He also explains how he and Stephen Jay Gould arrived at the theory of punctuated equilibria, which holds that evolutionary change took place in relatively quick, abrupt spurts. (Oct.)

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