Hi DJP,Chris Knight’s views

Hi DJP,Chris Knight’s views are eccentric, and not generally accepted among his peers. The most recent (friendly) criticism I read was by human origins specialist Chris Stringer, who said that Knight’s answers are ingenious, but are answers to the wrong questions. Having said that, no one among his peers doubts that his (eccentric) views are nevertheless built solely on widely accepted theories and on the most up to date findings in the relevant fields (primatology, archaeology, anthropology, etc). It’s a long time since I’ve read it but I think I’d still recommend Chris Knight’s Blood Relations (1991) for the same kind of reasons that Dawkins and other scientists recommend Roger Penrose’s books on consciousness: even if the central eccentric idea is wrong, you’ll nevertheless learn a lot about the present(ish) state of play in science by reading it. It is also an attempt (to answer your first question) to rescue Engels/Morgan and defend the general validity of their ideas.Anthropologist David Graeber’s books are also worth pursuing, particularly his new one on Debt, which mentions Morgan in passing.CheersStuart