The Invention of Good and Evil: A World History of Morality

In this ambitious volume Hanno Sauer integrates the findings of cutting-edge interdisciplinary research into a sweeping synthetic narrative of human evolution -- a history with morality at its core. He explains how, starting 5 million years ago, adaptive pressures created the need for human cooperation and over time were the source of our notions of right and wrong. Sauer then moves forward in time, showing how this evolutionary inheritance shaped human society, and ultimately how modern societies, and our current social tensions, are the result of this deep history--while at the same time arguing that this history shows that humans share fundamental moral values across time and cultures.