Perspectives in Ethology

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. Built for Speed: Pleistocene Climate Variation and the Origin of Human Culture

   • Peter J. Richerson, Robert Boyd

   Pages 1-45

3. The Evolution of Life History, Intelligence and Diet Among Chimpanzees and Human Foragers

   • Jane B. Lancaster, Hillard S. Kaplan, Kim Hill, A. Magdalena Hurtado

   Pages 47-72

4. Cultures as Supraorganismal Wholes

   • Michael T. Ghiselin

   Pages 73-87

5. Niche Construction and Gene-Culture Coevolution: An Evolutionary Basis for the Human Sciences

   • F. John Odling-Smee, Kevin N. Laland, Marcus W. Feldman

   Pages 89-111

6. Biological and Material Cultural Evolution: Are There any True Parallels?

   • Niles Eldredge

   Pages 113-153

7. Pitfalls of Behavioral Selectionism

   • François Tonneau, Michel B. C. Sokolowski

   Pages 155-180

8. Being Concrete About Culture and Cultural Evolution

   • William M. Baum

   Pages 181-212

9. Intentionality is the Mark of the Vital

   • Nicholas S. Thompson, Patrick G. Derr

   Pages 213-229

10. Evolutionary Models of Music: From Sexual Selection to Group Selection

    • Steven Brown

    Pages 231-281

11. Biology, Culture, & Religion

    • Robert A. Hinde

    Pages 283-307

12. Back Matter

    Pages 309-318

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The relations between behavior, evolution, and culture have been a subject of vigorous debate since the publication of Darwin's The Descent of Man (1871). The latest volume of Perspectives in Ethology brings anthropologists, ethologists, psychologists, and evolutionary theorists together to reexamine this important relation. With two exceptions (the essays by Brown and Eldredge), all of the present essays were originally presented at the Fifth Biannual Symposium on the Science of Behavior held in Guadalajara, Mexico, in February 1998. The volume opens with the problem of the origins of culture, tackled from two different viewpoints by Richerson and Boyd, and Lancaster, Kaplan, Hill, and Hurtado, respectively. Richerson and Boyd analyze the possible relations between climatic change in the Pleistocene and the evo­ lution of social learning, evaluating the boundary conditions under which social learning could increase fitness and contribute to culture. Lancaster, Kaplan, Hill, and Hurtado examine how a shift in the diet of the genus Homo toward difficult-to-acquire food could have determined (or coe­ volved with) unique features of the human life cycle. These two essays illus­ trate how techniques that range from computer modeling to comparative behavioral analysis, and that make use of a wide range of data, can be used for drawing inferences about past selection pressures. As culture evolves, it must somehow find its place within (and also affect) a complex hierarchy of behavioral and biological factors.

• behavior
• biology
• evolution
• the origin

• University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara-Jalisco, Mexico

  François Tonneau

• Clark University, Worcester, USA

  Nicholas S. Thompson

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