Sharing in an unequal world: The origins and survival of human cooperation.

"The Pleistocene Social Contract: Culture and Cooperation in Human Evolution" by Kim Sterelny explores the origins and survival of human cooperation in an unequal world. Sterelny argues that early human societies were egalitarian and cooperative, but inequality emerged and stabilized over time. The book examines the role of culture in solving the challenges of cooperation, such as the generation and distribution of benefits. Sterelny presents a four-phase model of human cooperation, tracing its evolution from the suppression of dominance hierarchies to the establishment of sedentary societies with hierarchies. The book provides a detailed and empirically grounded account of human social evolution, drawing on a range of disciplinary fields. However, some caveats include the need for further exploration of factors such as cooperative breeding and the limits of ethnographic analogy. Overall, "The Pleistocene Social Contract" offers a comprehensive and insightful analysis of the evolution of human cooperation. [Extracted from the article]