Chris Knight A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning, by Claudia Strauss & Naomi Quinn, 1997. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; ISBN 0-521-59409-X hardback, £50 & US$64.95; ISBN 0-521-59541-X paperback £16.95 & US$24.95, 323 pp. How the Mind Works, by Steven Pinker, 1997. London: Penguin; ISBN 0-713-99130-5 hardback, £25, 660 pp. Archaeologists study outcomes of past cognitive … Continue reading “Culture, cognition and conflict.”
WOMEN INITIATED CULTURE A review of Chris Knight, 1991. Blood Relations: Menstruation and the origins of culture. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. Women initiated culture. It was they who opened the door to human history. They did so through a sex strike whose banner was the blood of menstruation. This is Chris Knight’s … Continue reading “The Revolution Which Worked”
THE ORIGINS OF SOCIETY was written in 1988, three years before the publication of my Blood Relations: Menstruation and the origins of culture. It still provides a good basic outline of my argument. With hindsight, this rendering appears to me as one of several early "mythical" versions of my story – although by no means … Continue reading “The Origins of Society”
A review of Chris Knight’s Blood Relations: Menstruation and the origins of culture. 2000 Timothy Mason (Universite de Paris 8) 2000. The first academic anthropologists were much influenced by Darwin. The ways in which Tylor or Frazer applied the selectionist theory of evolution have often been summarily characterized as an Imperialistic and ethnocentric … Continue reading “Evolution or Revolution?”
