The Rational Optimist_ How Prosperity Evolves - Matt Ridley [175]
p. 69 ‘driven to the brink of extinction by human predation’. Stiner, M. C. and Kuhn, S. L. 2006. Changes in the ‘connectedness’ and resilience of palaeolithic societies in Mediterranean ecosystems. Human Ecology 34:693–712.
p. 69 ‘in the Mojave desert of California, ravens occasionally kill tortoises for food’. http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/archives/E/usgs398.html.
p. 70 ‘shells, fossil coral, steatite, jet, lignite, hematite, and pyrite were used to make ornaments and objects’. Stringer, C. and McKie, R. 1996. African Exodus. Jonathan Cape.
p. 70 ‘A flute made from the bone of a vulture’. Conard, N.J., Maline, M. and Munzel, S.C. 2009. New flutes document the earliest musical tradition in southwestern Germany. Nature 46:737–740.
p. 71 ‘jewellery made of shells from the Black Sea and amber from the Baltic’. Ofek, H. 2001. Second Nature: Economic Origins of Human Evolution. Cambridge University Press.
p. 71 ‘This is in striking contrast to the Neanderthals, whose stone tools were virtually always made from raw material available within an hour’s walk of where the tool was used’. Stringer. C. 2006. Homo Britannicus. Penguin: ‘Whereas virtually all Neanderthal stone tools were made from raw materials sourced within an hour’s walk from their sites, Cro-Magnons were either much more mobile or had exchange networks for their resources covering hundreds of miles’.
p. 73 ‘say the evolutionary biologists Mark Pagel and Ruth Mace’. Pagel, M. and Mace, R. 2004. The cultural wealth of nations. Nature 428:275–8.
p. 73 ‘Ian Tattersall remarks’. Tattersall, I. 1997. Becoming Human. Harcourt.
p. 73 ‘It is such a human a thing to do, and so obvious an explanation of the thing that needs explaining: the capacity for innovation’. See for example Horan, R.D., Bulte, E.H. and Shogren, J.F. 2005. How trade saved humanity from biological exclusion: the Neanderthal enigma revisited and revised. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 58:1–29.
p. 75 ‘defined by the stockbroker David Ricardo in 1817’. Ricardo, D. 1817. The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation. John Murray.
p. 75 ‘It is such an elegant idea that it is hard to believe that Palaeolithic people took so long to stumble upon it (or economists to define it)’. It is also surprising how hard it is for many intellectuals to grasp its essentials. For a catalogue of its misrepresentations, see Paul Krugman’s essay ‘Ricardo’s Difficult Idea’: http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/ricardo.htm.
pp. 75–6 ‘Insect social life is built not on increases in the complexity of individual behaviour, “but instead on specialization among individuals”.’ Holldobbler, B. and Wilson, E.O. 2008. The Superorganism. Norton.
p. 77 ‘Even Charles Darwin reckoned’. Darwin, C. R. 1871. The Descent of Man. Quoted in Ofek, H. 2001. Second Nature: Economic Origins of Human Evolution. Cambridge University Press.
p. 77 ‘According to the anthropologist Joe Henrich’. Heinrich, J. 2004. Demography and cultural evolution: how adaptive cultural processes can produce maladaptive losses – the Tasmanian case. American Antiquity 69:197–214.
p. 78 ‘The most striking case of technological regress is Tasmania’. Heinrich, J. 2004. Demography and cultural evolution: how adaptive cultural processes can produce maladaptive losses – the Tasmanian case. American Antiquity 69:197–214.
p. 79 ‘it was not that there was no innovation; it was that regress overwhelmed progress’. Diamond, J. 1993. Ten thousand years of solitude. Discover, March 1993.
p. 80 ‘The Tasmanian market was too small to sustain many specialised skills’. Heinrich, J. 2004. Demography and cultural evolution: how adaptive cultural processes can produce maladaptive losses – the Tasmanian case. American Antiquity 69:197–214.
p. 81 ‘On Kangaroo Island and Flinders