M. Kay Martin - Böcker

Female of the Species is an attempt to use the approach of traditional anthropology in the examination of the position of women at the species level. While Martin and Voorhies recognize that there are fundamental differences between men and women that stem from basic biological differences, they are committed to the proposition that culture rather than biology plays the more critical role in determining those features of behavior which ultimately dichotomize the sexes. Female of the Species takes a step towards quantifying and understanding these cultural differences by looking at the changing roles women have played in society over time.

The Wrong Ape for Early Human Origins examines ways in which the chimpanzee referential model has exerted a primary influence on evolutionary theory, dominating portraits of proto- and early human social life, and in the broader sense, of human nature itself. Evidence on which this model is based is revisited, along with new cross-disciplinary findings that point to alternative scenarios for hominin phylogeny, ecology and subsistence, primeval kinship, cognition and language, and the respective roles played by aggression and cooperation as evolutionary drivers. Recent advances in phylogenetics, evolutionary biology, and new additions to the fossil record are rendering linear, monotypic models obsolete. Contemporary theories on species divergence and change over time are shifting attention from ancient genotypes to factors that influence gene expression, and from innate prescriptive behaviors to epigenesis and the capacity for behavioral plasticity. This broader platform has the potential to fundamentally revise current notions about the basic nature, phenotypic traits, and lifeways of ancestral humans. It informs a different profile of our progenitors—one that reflects greater ecological bandwidth, reliance on creative niche construction, and hominin agency in the structuring of ancient reproductive and social groups.

What set our ancestors off on a separate evolutionary trajectory was the ability to flex their reproductive and social strategies in response to changing environmental conditions. Exploring new cross-disciplinary research that links this capacity to critical changes in the organization of the primate brain, Social DNA presents a new synthesis of ideas on human social origins – challenging models that trace our beginnings to traits shaped by ancient hunting economies, or to genetic platforms shared with contemporary apes.