Biological anthropology

About: Biological anthropology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1126 publications have been published within this topic receiving 12757 citations. The topic is also known as: biological anthropology & somatology.

Darwinism, Social Darwinism, and the Supreme Function of Mothers

Abstract: [Editor's Note: Sarah Hrdy is a sociobiologist whose work has focused on female reproductive strategies in both humans and non-human primates. Her graduate field work, detailed in The Langurs ofAbu: FemaleandMale Strategies in Reproduction, was the first book on wild primates to devote equal attention to both sexes. Among these South Asian monkeys, females have adapted to the threat of infanticide by immigrant males by adopting polyandrous mating habits to confiase the paternity of their infants. She also documented how mothering is shared among groups of related females, a practice she termed "alloparenting." Her subsequent book. The Woman ThatNever Fvolved, focused more broadly on the role of female primate strategies in evolution. A 1984 edited volume (reprinted in 2008) with G. Hatisfater, hfanticide: ComparativeandFvolutionayj Perspectives, explored the evolutionary advantages of the seemingly inexplicable practice of infanticide, as well as the social and ecological variables contributing to its use. In the hoo\<. MotherNature:A History ofMothers, Infants andNatural Selection, from which the excerpt below derives (pp. 1225), she explores the tensions between what is advantageous for the evolutionary success of the mother's genes and the survival of each particular infant. Along the way, Hrdy considers such topics as the evolutionary causes and consequences of "cooperative breeding" (a breeding system with alloparental care and provisioning of young), the reasons for menopause, the emotional and physiological consequences of lactation, why adoption is easier in humans than in many non-primate mammals, the role and optimal number of "fathers, " why female modesty evolved, why babies are cute, and the reasons why some cultures and socioeconomic groups prefer sons. Her newest book. Mothers and Others: The Fvolutionary Origins ofMutual Understanding, due out in early 2009, explores the psychological implications ofhumankind's long legacy ofcooperative breeding. Dr. Hrdy is Professor Emerita ofAnthropology at the University of California at Davis and is herself the mother of three grown children. A.S.B.] According to Genesis, God created first heaven, then earth, then each variety of plant, every species of -nonhuman animal, and, on the sixth day, man, and from one of his ribs, or perhaps his thigh, woman. In 1859, Charles Darwin proposed a revolutionary alterna-

Psycho-Analysis and Anthropology

Abstract: REFERRING to the letters in NATURE from Dr. Malinowski (November 3) and Prof. Elliot Smith (November 24) on this subject, I should like to make three remarks.