Basketball legend Michael Jordan dressed in a suit and holding a Nike Air Jordan athletic shoe
I've been using this image for years to illustrate prestige bias in my lecture on cultural evolution, assuming everyone would recognize him. This year I asked the class if they knew who this was, and the only student who did was the one black student. He was shocked that no one else did. 🧪 #BioAnth
Women’s mental health: current status and evolutionary perspectives by Carol Worthman | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core - www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
New episode (1218), with Dr. Edward Hagen. We discuss whether sex is binary, the distinction between sex and gender, and more. #Anthropology #Biology #Science
YouTube: youtu.be/DjIqDREBOqI
Podcast: bit.ly/4avxMHW
Top panel: My plot of US adult female and male height distributions, which are much narrower, and overlap less than in the figure from Fuentes, which is in the bottom panel.
1. After I posted my critical review of @anthrofuentes.bsky.social Sex is a Spectrum, a colleague pointed out that his figure of adult heights by sex (bottom panel👇) can't be right: there aren't that many US adults shorter than 4' or taller than 7'
Turns out Fuentes' data are made up 🧪 #BioAnth 🧵
ABSTRACT The extended evolutionary synthesis (EES) is a school of thought that maintains that genetic determination and natural selection are over-emphasized in the study of evolution at the expense of non-genetic inheritance and processes of evolution beyond selection. Its proponents call for the de-emphasis of genetics and the adoption of a broader model of inheritance that includes cultural and epigenetic transgenerational effects and strong adaptive phenotypic plasticity. Presenting itself as a radical alternative to what it claims is a rigid and ossified theoretical orthodoxy, the EES has lately gained considerable traction among scholars of human evolution, and a distinct sub-branch of the EES unique to the biological anthropological study of human evolution has emerged (the EES in human evolution). To date, however, no direct comparison between the EES in human evolution and other contemporary evolutionary approaches has been attempted to evaluate whether the EES in human evolution affords researchers an edge in articulating good questions and structuring research programs to answer them. After reviewing the landscape of evolutionary theory, we evaluate whether the EES in human evolution is capable of delivering the processually pluralistic vision of evolution it has long promised and whether it brings something that the decades-long ongoing synthesis (OS) of evolutionary theory since the modern synthesis does not. We then conduct a head-to-head comparison to evaluate the relative explanatory efficacy of the EES and our preferred OS theoretical framework on several issues of human morphological evolution. We demonstrate that evolutionary perspectives as drawn from the OS have a much more clarifying effect on the investigation of human evolution than their EES-based competitor. Far from being a radical extension of evolutionary thought, the EES in human evolution offers little more than another idiom in which to tell adaptationist stories and triumphalist narr…
A much-needed critique of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) as applied to human evolution, by @evoroseman.bsky.social and Ben Auerbach (2026).
Evolving a Field: Can Evolutionary Theory Provide What the Study of Human Evolution Requires? 🧪 #BioAnth
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
The International Society for Hunter-Gatherer Research are delighted to announce that CHAGS 14 will take place in Belém, Brazil Mon 12 - Fri 16 July 2027. Events/trips immediately before/afterwards.
Tx to hosts: Goeldi Museum & Federal Univ. of Pará. More details to follow.
Please share widely!
A new podcast interview by @ilarimakela.bsky.social with Richard B. Lee about Man the Hunter! Should be fascinating.
onhumans.substack.com/p/the-origin...
As we've argued in a recent preprint, Ardrey might have benefited from paying more heed to the anthropologists.
osf.io/preprints/os...
Everyone should read the Spandrels paper.
But too often it's discussed without context of the other contributions.
Esp. Clutton-Brock & Harvey on how the comparative method can be used to test adaptive hypothesis, and Cain’s final critique (which SJG called “tame” compared to the oral remarks).
Our new paper in Hunter-Gatherer Research!
We explored women’s decision-making power within households in two subsistence communities with different gender norms (BaYaka foragers & Bandongo fisher-farmers) in the Congolese rainforest ✨
www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3...
Latest crop of early online papers at HGR includes some bangers - if I do say so myself. Not just this report on BaYaka Women's autonomy and my own article about cage traps, but also Sterelny on quasi-darwinian mechanisms in cultural evolution.
www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3...
"The problem...which recurs throughout 'Spandrels', is not that this criticism is wrong, it’s that Gould & Lewontin...make only cursory and superficial remarks about how test those alternatives, or about how to pursue an alternative research programme built on different conceptual foundations"
Not to forget this extremely interesting paper on consensus-based decision-making in egalitarian societies.
bsky.app/profile/vive...
And don't miss out on Vivek's absolutely sterling interview with Bob Kelly.
bsky.app/profile/vive...
😂
for sure. this one i've assigned as well
Gearing up to teach my grad Theory class again, I am reminded that the Spandrels of San Marcos is not a good paper.
dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/w...
(but I'll probably assign it anyway, for precisely this reason)
yes, shoot me an email please
Great to read Vivek's interview with Bob - lots of interesting things here. And not just the insights into Binford's data collection 😱. Thanks to both Vivek and Bob for the publication!
Check out my interview with Bob Kelly in Hunter Gatherer Research.
The view from 30,000 feet: An interview with archaeologist Robert L Kelly
liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/...
New article in Hunter Gatherer Research!
Foraging societies practice consensus-based politics. We conduct a xc review and argue that it helps to boost collective intelligence.
Consensus, cooperation and collective intelligence in foraging societies
liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/...
🎄 New paper! 🎁
Since the 20s it's been said that "the Hadza don't use traps". Except sporadic snaring, none have been reported. So I was excited to find baited cage traps in use. More exciting, this was cross-cultural transmission — seldom seen in action!
1/5
tinyurl.com/cagetrap
Perhaps a late Xmas/Chanukah/Festivus/Kwanzaa present for some research hot shot currently not in Canada but who might like to move here - the new Impact+ Research Chairs. Note the strategic areas in Arctic, environment, climate resilience and water security. 🧪⚒️
careers.ucalgary.ca/jobs/1717054...
reminds me of something else we've talked a bit about
It never ceases to amaze me how flexible and multi-purpose the human foot can be.
Pics taken with the Batek of Malaysia.
In episode 1022, I talk with Dr. Vivek Venkataraman about tree climbing, running, and hunting across human societies. #Anthropology #Science
youtu.be/QirFyPqN3e0
"At Brown and Harvard, more than 20 percent of undergraduates are registered as disabled. At Amherst, that figure is 34 percent." Accommodation Nation:
America’s colleges have an extra-time-on-tests problem. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
nice article, congrats!
We are currently testing these ideas with empirical data collected by our project in Malaysia, the Orang Asli Health and Lifeways Project (OA HeLP). Stay tuned!
www.orangaslihealth.org
Why dampened inflammatory activity?
Four possible reasons explored here: low levels of adiposity, high physical activity levels, diets consisting of minimally processed foods, and infections from helminths
