Author and anthropologist Richard L. Currier writes about contemporary society, comparative ethnography, the history of technology, paleoanthropology, primate social behavior, and Greek Island cultures. He received his BA and PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley, and he taught anthropology at Berkeley, the University of Minnesota, and the State University of New York. Currier is the author of UNBOUND: How Eight Technologies Made Us Human, Transformed Society, and Brought Our World to the Brink, (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2015), available in hardcover, paperback, eBook, and audiobook formats from booksellers everywhere. A German edition of UNBOUND was published by Mensaion Verlag in 2024 (see details in "Books/UNBOUND"). 

Richard is currently working on his next book, UNNATURAL: How Modern Society is Destroying Human Happiness, which explores the disconnect between our inherited human natures and the realities of daily life in modern societies. In this new book, the author explores the numerous ways in which these disharmonies have produced a rising tide of mental and physical disorders—including chronic anxiety, depression, drug abuse, heart disease, obesity, and diabetes—that have spread like a plague throughout modern society.

• Latest Interviews
  

In his twice-weekly podcast, "My Alien Life," Cameron Brauer interviews Richard Currier about UNBOUND: How Eight Technologies Made Us Human, Transformed Society, and Brought Our World to the Brink. Cameron's background in anthropology and archaeology gave him a unique perspective as an interviewer, and his numerous challenging and relevant questions resulted in a particularly lively and fascinating discussion. 

• "Relevant or Irrelevant?" On Public Radio affiliate Station KALA, a panel of historians interviews Richard Currier about the thesis of UNBOUND, asking him to explain how eight technologies determined the course of human evolution and human history.
  
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UNBOUND: The Online Course

• "Technologies That Transformed Humanity" This 10-day online course summarizes the theories set forth in UNBOUND, explaining how eight key technologies made us human and repeatedly transformed society. An audio version of this course, narrated by the author, is now available. See details at the Online Course Description.
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  Popular Articles

• "Can We Colonize Other Planets?" The idea of colonizing other planets is a modern myth that flies in the face of the scientific facts about other planets and space travel.

• "The Flowering of Symbolic Communication" This paper was presented at “Brave New World: How Future Technology will Impact Human Life,” an international conference held in Leiden, The Netherlands in 2017. It outlines how the invention of symbolic communication led to the sharing of knowledge, the creation of ethnic identities, the conceptualization of time, and the rise of civilizations.

• "Sociobiology: The New Heresy" This in-depth discussion of E.O. Wilson's seminal work announcing the establishment of an entirely new field of evolutionary biology was originally published in Human Behavior Magazine in 1976. It has remained one of my most widely-read articles since its publication.

CLICK HERE to read chapter-by-chapter summaries of UNBOUND, access chapter bibliographies as well as endorsements by professional anthropologists, and view all illustrations included in the published book.