Chapter 13 Human Survival and Life History in Evolutionary Perspective

A PRIMARY GOAL of evolutionary anthropology is to determine and quantify differences between humans and other species, especially our primate relatives, and to reconstruct the evolutionary history of our species. As a species of seven billion individuals, humans occupy almost every habitat on the planet. Our exceptionally long lives, encephalized brains, extreme sociality, and penchant for cumulative cultural learning have all likely contributed to the biological success of Homo sapiens. Evolutionary anthropology has the goal of describing human universals while also explaining variation among and within human populations in genes, behavior, psychology, and culture. This chapter focuses on human survival and life history: theoretical approaches and key features of human adapt-ability across time and space. I focus on small- scale soci-eties of hunter- gatherers, because more than 90 % of hu-man history has been spent living in them. Even though domestication is a more recent feature of human societies, I also include forager- horticulturalists because they share many features with hunter- gatherers, such as natural fer-tility, egalitarianism, kin- based society, high work effort, and similar life spans. The fi rst section summarizes several evolutionary approaches to studying humans. The second section characterizes human subsistence and sociality as important aspects of evolved life history. The third section integrates cultural learning and psychological adaptations related to social cognition and predator avoidance. I con-clude by suggesting directions for future research. Human Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences Several complementary approaches comprise the evolution-ary study of humans: human behavioral ecology, dual gene-culture inheritance theory, and evolutionary psychology. Each has been infl uential in helping to understand aspects of human nature and the human condition. This three-pronged approach to studying humans is no doubt linked to the fact that the humans studying and being studied are self- refl ective, culturally rich, loquacious, and disputatious primates. Human Behavioral Ecology Human behavioral ecology (HBE) applies principles of natural selection to explain behavioral and cultural di-versity in human populations (Borgerhoff Mulder 1991