Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture

Part I: The Evolution of Imagination.- The Behaviorally Modern Human Imagination.- The Evolution of Imagination through Narratives and Belief.- Part II: Meta-Narratives.- Imagining the Gods.- The Evolution of Traits and Stories: Two Rival Templates for Self-Understanding.- Descent with Imagination: The Cultural Evolution of Traditional Narratives.- The Unimaginable Place in Nature: Literary Resistance to Darwinian Evolution.- Epic Communities and Cosmic Apprenticeship: Group-Belonging and Social Learning in Popular Science Books.- Part III: Aesthetics, Music, and the Plastic Arts.- Tapping the Imagination at the Dawn of Human Culture: Art, Brain and Evolutionary Pressures.- Evolutionary Constraints on Creativity in the Visual and Plastic Arts.- The Role of Aesthetic Style in Framing Cognitive Orientation Towards the Future.- The Evolution of Music: A Paradigm of Embodied Cognition.- The Influence of Image Salience on Artistic Expression: Cross-Cultural Examples of Large Felid Predators.- Key Stimuli and Power Objects: Aesthetics and Humans' Inborn Sensibilities.- Part IV: Film, Media, and Performance.- Film and Coevolution: Kubrick's Movies as Modes of Religious Ritual.- Why Women Love Bromance: The Rise of Slash Fiction.- "Unbreakable, Incorruptible, Unyielding": Doom as an Agency Simulator.- Part V: Literature.- Adaptive Flights of Fancy: An Evolutionary Perspective on Speculative Fiction.- Narrative and Verse-and Comics.- Literary Representations of Parental Investment: Emotional Quandaries and Strategic Decisions.