Human Evolutionary Demography

Human evolutionary demography is an emerging field blending natural science with social science. This edited volume provides a much-needed, interdisciplinary introduction to the field and highlights cutting-edge research for interested readers and researchers in demography, the evolutionary behavioural sciences, biology, and related disciplines. By bridging the boundaries between social and biological sciences, the volume stresses the importance of a unified understanding of both in order to grasp past and current demographic patterns. Demographic traits, and traits related to demographic outcomes, including fertility and mortality rates, marriage, parental care, menopause, and cooperative behavior are subject to evolutionary processes. Bringing an understanding of evolution into demography therefore incorporates valuable insights into this field; just as knowledge of demography is key to understanding evolutionary processes. By asking questions about old patterns from a new perspective, the volume—composed of contributions from established and early-career academics—demonstrates that a combination of social science research and evolutionary theory offers holistic understandings and approaches that benefit both fields. Human Evolutionary Demography introduces an emerging field in an accessible style. It is suitable for graduate courses in demography, as well as upper-level undergraduates. Its range of research is sure to be of interest to academics working on demographic topics (anthropologists, sociologists, demographers), natural scientists working on evolutionary processes, and disciplines which cross-cut natural and social science, such as evolutionary psychology, human behavioral ecology, cultural evolution, and evolutionary medicine. As an accessible introduction, it should interest readers whether or not they are currently familiar with human evolutionary demography.

The Hadza, an ethnic group indigenous to northern Tanzania, are one of the few remaining hunter-gatherer populations. Archaeology shows 130,000 years of hunting and gathering in their land but Hadza are rapidly losing areas vital to their way of life. This book offers a unique opportunity to capture a disappearing lifestyle. Blurton Jones interweaves data from ecology, demography and evolutionary ecology to present a comprehensive analysis of the Hadza foragers. Discussion centres on expansion of the adaptationist perspective beyond topics customarily studied in human behavioural ecology, to interpret a wider range of anthropological concepts. Analysing behavioural aspects, with a specific focus on relationships and their wider impact on the population, this book reports the demographic consequences of different patterns of marriage and the availability of helpers such as husbands, children, and grandmothers. Essential for researchers and graduate students alike, this book will challenge preconceptions of human sociobiology.

Despite recent advances in our understanding of the genetic basis of human behavior, little of this work has penetrated into formal demography. Very few demographers worry about how biological processes might affect voluntary behavior choices that have demographic consequences even though behavioral geneticists have documented genetics effects on variables such as parenting and divorce. Offspring: Human Fertility Behavior in Demographic Perspective brings together leading researchers from a wide variety of disciplines to review the state of research in this emerging field and to identify promising research directions for the future.

Two distinctive approaches to the study of human demography exist within anthropology today: anthropological demography and human evolutionary ecology. The first stresses the role of culture in determining population parameters, while the second posits that demographic rates reflect adaptive behaviors that are the products of natural selection. Both sub-disciplines have achieved notable successes, but each has ignored and been actively disdainful of the other. This text attempts a rapprochement of anthropological demography and human evolutionary ecology through recognition of common research topics and the construction of a broad theoretical framework incorporating both cultural and biological motivation. Both these approaches are utilized to search for demographic strategies in varied cultural and temporal contexts ranging from African pastoralists through North American post-industrial societies. As such this book is relevant to cultural and biological anthropologists, demographers, sociologists, and historians.

Wide-ranging and inclusive, this text provides an invaluable review of an expansive selection of topics in human evolution, variation and adaptability for professionals and students in biological anthropology, evolutionary biology, medical sciences and psychology. The chapters are organized around four broad themes, with sections devoted to phenotypic and genetic variation within and between human populations, reproductive physiology and behavior, growth and development, and human health from evolutionary and ecological perspectives. An introductory section provides readers with the historical, theoretical and methodological foundations needed to understand the more complex ideas presented later. Two hundred discussion questions provide starting points for class debate and assignments to test student understanding.

The Ache, whose life history the authors recounts, are a small indigenous population of hunters and gatherers living in the neotropical rainforest of eastern Paraguay. This is part exemplary ethnography of the Ache and in larger part uses this population to make a signal contribution to human evolutionary ecology.

An authoritative overview of the concepts and applications of biological demography This book provides a comprehensive introduction to biodemography, an exciting interdisciplinary field that unites the natural science of biology with the social science of human demography. Biodemography is an essential resource for demographers, epidemiologists, gerontologists, and health professionals as well as ecologists, population biologists, entomologists, and conservation biologists. This accessible and innovative book is also ideal for the classroom. James Carey and Deborah Roach cover everything from baseline demographic concepts to biodemographic applications, and present models and equations in discrete rather than continuous form to enhance mathematical accessibility. They use a wealth of real-world examples that draw from data sets on both human and nonhuman species and offer an interdisciplinary approach to demography like no other, with topics ranging from kinship theory and family demography to reliability engineering, tort law, and demographic disasters such as the Titanic and the destruction of Napoleon's Grande Armée. Provides the first synthesis of demography and biology Covers baseline demographic models and concepts such as Lexis diagrams, mortality, fecundity, and population theory Features in-depth discussions of biodemographic applications like harvesting theory and mark-recapture Draws from data sets on species ranging from fruit flies and plants to elephants and humans Uses a uniquely interdisciplinary approach to demography, bringing together a diverse range of concepts, models, and applications Includes informative "biodemographic shorts," appendixes on data visualization and management, and more than 150 illustrations of models and equations

This volume presents state-of-the-art empirical studies working in a paradigm that has become known as human behavioral ecology. The emergence of this approach in anthropology was marked by publication by Aldine in 1979 of an earlier collection of studies edited by Chagnon and Irons entitled Evolutionary Biology and Human Social Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective. During the two decades that have passed since then, this innovative approach has matured and expanded into new areas that are explored here. The book opens with an introductory chapter by Chagnon and Irons tracing the origins of human behavioral ecology and its subsequent development. Subsequent chapters, written by both younger scholars and established researchers, cover a wide range of societies and topics organ-ized into six sections. The first section includes two chapters that provide historical background on the development of human behavioral ecology and com-pare it to two complementary approaches in the study of evolution and human behavior, evolutionary psychology, and dual inheritance theory. The second section includes five studies of mating efforts in a variety of societies from South America and Africa. The third section covers parenting, with five studies on soci-eties from Africa, Asia, and North America. The fourth section breaks somewhat with the tradition in human behavioral ecology by focusing on one particularly problematic issue, the demographic transition, using data from Europe, North America, and Asia. The fifth section includes studies of cooperation and helping behaviors, using data from societies in Micronesia and South America. The sixth and final section consists of a single chapter that places the volume in a broader critical and comparative context. The contributions to this volume demonstrate, with a high degree of theoretical and methodological sophistication--the maturity and freshness of this new paradigm in the study of human behavior. The volume will be of interest to anthropologists and other professions working on the study of cross-cultural human behavior. Lee Cronk is associate professor of anthropology at Rutgers University. Napoleon Chagnon is professor of anthropology, emeritus at the University of California, Santa Barbara. William Irons is professor of anthropology at Northwestern University, Evanston Illinois.