Napoleon Chagnon meticulously documented the customs of a tribe where violence was sexually rewarded. Some of his academic colleagues never forgave him for it. by Peggy Sastre. He discovered that Yanomamö society was neither peaceful nor cooperative but held together by bloodshed and terror. Raids of rival villages were common, as was the killing of […]
by Rob Brooks. Anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, more than any other researcher, built the modern evolutionary understanding of motherhood. Her exceptional book Mother Nature: A History of Mothers, Infants and Natural Selection strips away the idea of the boundlessly loving and caring mother, endowed by evolution with instincts to selflessly serve and protect her young. […]
By John Horgan. Child-rearing is radically different in hunter–gatherer societies like the African !Kung, Hadza and Aka, who are thought to live more or less as our ancestors did for 99 percent of our evolutionary history. Mothers in these societies get lots of help from other females, including grandmas, sisters and friends, who may even […]