Afzal Upal: OccidentalCognitive anthropologists such as Pascal Boyer have argued that religious concepts are minimally counterintuitive and that this gives them mnemic advantages. I will ague that people have the memory architecture that results in such concepts being more memorable because it makes them better learners which gives them an evolutionary edge over their competitors. […]
Mark Collard: Simon Fraser University Archaeology
Aaron Blaisdell: UCLA Psychology and Brain Research InstituteI report a series of experiments showing that rats appear to make causal inferences in a basic task that taps into core features of causal reasoning. (1) They derived predictions of the outcomes of interventions after passive observational learning of different kinds of causal models. After learning through […]
Steve Gangestad: University of New Mexico PsychologyBroad, ambitious conceptualizations of the evolution of human sexuality (and accompanying unique social, developmental, and intellectual adaptations) offered by anthropologists and biologists over the last half century have been, almost universally, rooted in a foundational assumption: That women evolutionarily “lost†estrus—a distinct fertile-phase sexuality—and instead evolved “continuous†sexuality across […]
John Mitani: University of Michigan Anthropology
Jelmer Eerkens: UC Davis AnthropologyLaboratory experiments and ethnographic studies show that many aspects of human culture, particularly information, can change quickly in the course of transmission. The archaeological record indicates much more conservative rates of change, at least for material culture. Is there common theoretical ground between the micro- and macro- scales? This paper considers […]
Becky Frank: UCLA AnthropologyThe goal of this project was to examine the dynamics of exchange among female baboons and test predictions derived from a biological market model of grooming. Evolutionary theory predicts that cooperation among nonkin will be limited to reciprocating partners who monitor the balance of trade within their relationships in order to prevent […]
Carel van Schaik: Anthropological Institute & Museum, University of ZurichNaturalistic data on nonhuman primates show that the degree of despotism among males in primate groups is predicted by the degree to which mating access to females can be monopolized. Degree of despotism should affect other aspects of male behavioral strategies, such as how long top-dominants’ […]
Sam Bowles: Santa Fe InstituteAltruism -- benefiting fellow group members at a cost to oneself -- and parochialism – hostility toward individuals not of one’s own ethnic, racial or other group -- are common human behaviors. The intersection of the two – which we term parochial altruism -- is puzzling from an evolutionary perspective because […]
Carol Padden & Mark Aronoff: UCSD, Stonybrook UWe report here on work we have carried out with colleagues Wendy Sandler and Irit Meir on an emerging sign language, Al-Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language (ABSL). ABSL developed de novo in a small closed community of Bedouins which is now in its third generation of signers. In this […]
