Illuminating Human Evolution: 150 Years after Darwin / Evolutionary Studies (PDF)

This book presents a series of perspectives showing the current knowledge about human evolution. On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Darwin's book, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, in which he explicitly addresses the natural origin of the human species, this collective work reviews current and diverse aspects of human evolution: from psychology, linguistics, genomics, paleontology, artistic expression or sexual selection. It also offers a historical, social and ideological context of what is often considered to be Darwin's second great work after The Origin of Species.

Although current research is concentrated largely on fossils and genomes, this book also deals with the main points Darwin centered his attention on; comparative morphology and psychology, and sexual selection. It also covers other new aspects, such as the origin of art, social structure and social learning.

With contributions from leading experts in their respective fields, the book guides readers to the study of the social context of Darwin and his time, and the state of the art of studies on human evolution and sexual selection, considering all aspects that Darwin examined, including those that emerged later and now are important disciplines in our understanding of our own evolution.

The English translation of parts of this book from its Spanish original manuscript was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content.