PDF-(BOOS)-African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of

In 1955 on a visit to South Africa Robert Ardrey became aware of the growing evidence that man had evolved on the African continent from carnivorous predatory stock who had also long before man achieved the use of weapons A dramatist Ardreys interest in the African discoveries sprang less from purely scientific grounds than from the radical new light they cast on the eternal question Why do we behave as we do Are we naturally inclined towards war and weapons From 1955 to 1961 Ardrey commuted between the museums and libraries and laboratories of the North and the games reserves and fossil beds of Africa trying to answer that question Eventually his investigation expanded to include nationalism and patriotism private property and social order hierarchy and statusseeking even conscience All revealed roots in our most ancient animal beginnings and parallels in primate societies African Genesis is at once the story of an unprecedented personal search and a story of man that had never before been told It is a shocking book in that it challenges assumptions of human uniqueness that color every segment of modern thought and every aspect of our daily life While evolutionary science has advanced markedly since Ardreys times his insights on human behavior have a timeless quality and African Genesis remains a classic reference for anyone exploring lifes biggest questions Praise for the 1961 edition It is fate and fortune of some books to mark or make a turning point in science and culture This I believe African Genesis will do Dr Harlow Shapley Harvard University The most enjoyable and stimulating book on the evolution of man that has been published for some time The Nation What this sensational book presents is a new and radical interpretation of human behavior Since Ardrey has written it with excitement clarity and style the book will undoubtedly be widely read and cause widespread controversy But African Genesis also deserves the most serious attention on the part of scientists as well as laymen Dr Kenneth Oakley Leading British Anthropologist Senior Principal Scientific Officer British Museum Mr Ardreys African Genesis is a fascinating drama played on a very broad and deep stage of space time biological evolution and ideas The theme develops around mans striving to collect evidence and to understand the relational orders and timed sequences of living organisms The search is for rational light on the true place of man himself in these biotic orders and in the vast sweeps of the controlling environments In this high drama the characters enter leave relics and artifacts act their roles as species express their views and then exit Among the characters are men of prehistory nonhuman primates and the searching scientists themselves The latter quarrel and dispute cooperate and agree strive for status and retreat from controversy They are humans as portrayed skillfully by Ardrey Nevertheless they contribute to the slowly advancing understanding of man in his living world or to what Ardrey describes as a revolution of biological conceptions C R Carpenter Penn State University This quarrel about the innate nature of man began outside the gates of Eden was continued by Darwin and Wallace and now looms menacingly across the threshold of the United Nations Mr Ardrey has peered into our inner human darkness with wisdom gained from discoveries of natural history Loren Eiseley Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and History of Science University of Pennsylvania. Nature and Origins of Meteoritic BrecciasWestf Ayatullah. . Murtaza. . Mutahhari. Philosophy 224. Ayatullah. . Murtaza. . Mutahhari. Mutahhari. was a very influential Iranian Cleric.. He was thus a practitioner of the Shia school of Islam.. He was a close confidant of . Philosophy 224. Religious Theories of Human Nature. We are going to focus on the philosophical rather than religious significance of the sacred texts of . the various world religions we are going to consider.. Transition Year . 2013-2014. Philosophy comes from the Greek word ‘. Philosophia. ’ – meaning ‘love of wisdom’ – therefore, it is the study of knowledge and wisdom itself. Humans have always wondered about the nature of our universe and our place within it. Dr. Robert C. Newman. The Bible. '. s . Opening Words. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, . of Nature. Robert C. Newman. Introduction. How does the Bible view nature?. How does this compare or contrast with how nature is viewed by other worldviews?. We especially want to contrast this with scientism of various sorts.. Ayatullah. . Murtaza. . Mutahhari. Philosophy 224. Humans and Animals. Mutahhari. begins by . noting the continuity of humans with animals and characterizing . the basic difference . them: . the presence in humans of . Part 1: Sin and misery. Bible Reading. A) [Extent of sin]. Genesis 6:5, 11-12; 8:21. Psalm 51:5. Jeremiah 17:9. Romans 1:18-32. B) [Law and result]. Romans 7:7-12. Genesis 2:16-17. Genesis 3:1-7. Genesis 5:5, 8, 11. Hebrew 101. Shalom.  (. שָׁלוֹם). ). Slm. In biblical Text: . mls. For Example. “Don’t Mess with Texas”. Dnt. Mss wt . txs. In Biblical Text:. Sxt. . tw. . ssm. . tnd. Role of Eve. “For millions of years we have survived as hunters. In the few short millennia since our divorce from that necessity there has been no time for significant biological change - anatomical, physiological, or behavioral. Today we have small hope of comprehending ourselves and our world unless we understand that man still, in his inmost being, remains a hunter.”Robert Ardrey once again skates across decades of cutting-edge anthropological research, guiding the reader on a profound journey of discovery through twenty million years of man’s prehistory: from the days when his ancestors first emerged from the forests of Africa during the benevolent warmth and rains of the Miocene, through the unremitting drought of the Pliocene, and the dramatic climatic shifts of the Pleistocene, down to those few thousand years past when man emerged at last onto the stage of recorded history, a fully evolved hunting animal.Published in 1976, Ardrey\'s final work in the Nature of Man series is the capstone of a momentous achievement. His work deeply influenced figures like Stanley Kubrick, Sam Peckinpah, Strother Martin, and James Schlesinger, and lodged itself permanently in the public imagination. It will forever influence our answer to the fundamental question: Why is man man? A territory is an area of space which an animal guards as its exclusive possession and which it will defend against all members of its kind. In this revolutionary book Robert Ardrey takes a concept familiar to every biologist, brings together for the first time a fair sampling of all scientific observations of this form of behavior, and demonstrates that man obeys the same laws as does many other animal species. With African Genesis Mr Ardrey stirred up enough storm to last an author, one would think, for a lifetime. In The Territorial Imperative, however, he explores more deeply and incisively man\'s evolutionary nature and threatens even more forcefully some of our most precious assumptions. In a time when we attribute to man either no instincts at all, or instincts too weak to be of significance, Mr Ardrey\'s conclusions concerning the instinctual force exerted on human life by territory will undoubtedly raise an even greater storm. The author concludes, for example, that a common cause for war lies in our ignorance of man\'s animal nature - in particular, in the aggressor\'s ignorance of the enormous animal energies which his intrusion will release in a seemingly weak territorial defender. In a quite different vein, he concludes that family loyalty and responsibility, in men no less than in gibbons or beavers or robins, rests on joint attachment to a private territory. Perhaps the author\'s most far-reaching, most controversial conclusion is that morality - our willingness to make personal sacrifice for interests larger than ourselves - has its origins in dim evolutionary beginnings, is as essential to the life of the animal as to the lives of men, and could probably not exist in the human species without property either privately or jointly defended and the ultimate command of the territorial imperative. Like its predecessor, The Territorial Imperative is a work of wit, of literary wealth, of high adventure. Again the author draws on his inexhaustible knowledge of animal ways, and again his wife presents her intriguing sketches of animal life. But this time Mr Ardrey takes his readers on far deeper excursions into the ancient animal world, and on far deeper penetrations of the contemporary human wilderness. While evolutionary science has advanced markedly since Ardrey\'s times, his insights on human behavior have a timeless quality and The Territorial Imperative remains a classic reference for anyone wishing to begin an adventure exploring life\'s biggest questions. Praise for the 1966 edition: One of the most exciting books about the nature of man that has ever been presented. - Newsday Robert Ardrey\'s vision of man\'s future is as hopeful as any doctrinaire utopian\'s, and, in my opinion, a good deal more interesting... He ranks as the lyric poet of human evolution, a superb writer with a special vision. - E. O. Wilson One of the most intellectually exciting books of humanized sciences we have ever recommended in the Club\'s long history, a fascinating inquiry into the nature of the human animal, and an invaluable, as well as beautifully written, treatise on recent extensions of the boundaries of the biological sciences. - Clifton Fadiman, Book-of-the-Month Club News This is a fascinating, stimulating, fruitful, thought-provoking, and irritating book. - Dr Abraham Maslow, Department of Psychology, Brandeis University Few books are as fresh in concept, lively in style, and potentially important in understanding human behavior. - Wall Street Journal I expected an interesting and fascinating book, but did not anticipate a splendid compendium of facts and principles beautifully and vigorously described. - C. R. Carpenter, Professor of Psychology and Anthropology, Penn State University Ardrey belongs to the long and distinguished tradition of first-rate scientific amateurs... the love of science, especially biological science, animates every page. - The New Yorker “Violation of biological command has been the failure of social man. Vertebrates though we may be, we have ignored the law of equal opportunity since civilization’s earliest hours. Sexually reproducing beings though we are, we pretend today that the law of inequality does not exist. And enlightened though we may be, while we pursue the unattainable we make impossible the realizable.”In his two previous books, Robert Ardrey exploded a series of philosophical landmines. African Genesis (1961) fundamentally altered the understanding of man\'s relationship to his evolutionary forebears. The Territorial Imperative (1966) so saturated the cultural imagination that its title is in everyday use. The third in this series, The Social Contract denies that men are created equal, but insists they deserve absolute equality of opportunity. Since the publication of Rousseau’s Social Contract two centuries ago, men have wasted social resources, converted education into brain-washing, and ignored the primacy of natural law in pursuit of a goal of equality that is neither desirable nor possible. Discarding the myth, Ardrey combined his wealth of knowledge of animal ways with cutting edge biology to probe the perplexing problems of his time: the revolt of the young, the status struggle and the role of leadership, population control, urban overcrowding, violence in civilized life. A territory is an area of space which an animal guards as its exclusive possession and which it will defend against all members of its kind. In this revolutionary book Robert Ardrey takes a concept familiar to every biologist, brings together for the first time a fair sampling of all scientific observations of this form of behavior, and demonstrates that man obeys the same laws as does many other animal species. With African Genesis Mr Ardrey stirred up enough storm to last an author, one would think, for a lifetime. In The Territorial Imperative, however, he explores more deeply and incisively man\'s evolutionary nature and threatens even more forcefully some of our most precious assumptions. In a time when we attribute to man either no instincts at all, or instincts too weak to be of significance, Mr Ardrey\'s conclusions concerning the instinctual force exerted on human life by territory will undoubtedly raise an even greater storm. The author concludes, for example, that a common cause for war lies in our ignorance of man\'s animal nature - in particular, in the aggressor\'s ignorance of the enormous animal energies which his intrusion will release in a seemingly weak territorial defender. In a quite different vein, he concludes that family loyalty and responsibility, in men no less than in gibbons or beavers or robins, rests on joint attachment to a private territory. Perhaps the author\'s most far-reaching, most controversial conclusion is that morality - our willingness to make personal sacrifice for interests larger than ourselves - has its origins in dim evolutionary beginnings, is as essential to the life of the animal as to the lives of men, and could probably not exist in the human species without property either privately or jointly defended and the ultimate command of the territorial imperative. Like its predecessor, The Territorial Imperative is a work of wit, of literary wealth, of high adventure. Again the author draws on his inexhaustible knowledge of animal ways, and again his wife presents her intriguing sketches of animal life. But this time Mr Ardrey takes his readers on far deeper excursions into the ancient animal world, and on far deeper penetrations of the contemporary human wilderness. While evolutionary science has advanced markedly since Ardrey\'s times, his insights on human behavior have a timeless quality and The Territorial Imperative remains a classic reference for anyone wishing to begin an adventure exploring life\'s biggest questions. Praise for the 1966 edition: One of the most exciting books about the nature of man that has ever been presented. - Newsday Robert Ardrey\'s vision of man\'s future is as hopeful as any doctrinaire utopian\'s, and, in my opinion, a good deal more interesting... He ranks as the lyric poet of human evolution, a superb writer with a special vision. - E. O. Wilson One of the most intellectually exciting books of humanized sciences we have ever recommended in the Club\'s long history, a fascinating inquiry into the nature of the human animal, and an invaluable, as well as beautifully written, treatise on recent extensions of the boundaries of the biological sciences. - Clifton Fadiman, Book-of-the-Month Club News This is a fascinating, stimulating, fruitful, thought-provoking, and irritating book. - Dr Abraham Maslow, Department of Psychology, Brandeis University Few books are as fresh in concept, lively in style, and potentially important in understanding human behavior. - Wall Street Journal I expected an interesting and fascinating book, but did not anticipate a splendid compendium of facts and principles beautifully and vigorously described. - C. R. Carpenter, Professor of Psychology and Anthropology, Penn State University Ardrey belongs to the long and distinguished tradition of first-rate scientific amateurs... the love of science, especially biological science, animates every page. - The New Yorker the. Biblical . History of Beginnings. Gerhard F. . Hasel. There is a renewed interest in biblical genealogies in general and in Genesis 5 and 11:10-26 in particular.. It is important to consider Genesis 5 and 11 in view of .