Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-w5vf4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-25T03:36:29.500Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Development: Evolutionary ecology's midwife

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 June 2010

Karthik Panchanathan ,
Willem E. Frankenhuis  and
H. Clark Barrett
Karthik Panchanathan
Affiliation:
Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture, Department of Anthropology, University of California–Los Angles, CA 90095-1553. karthikpanchanathan@gmail.com http://buddha.bol.ucla.edu/ willem@frankenhuis.org http://www.willem.frankenhuis.org/
Willem E. Frankenhuis
Affiliation:
Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture, Department of Anthropology, University of California–Los Angles, CA 90095-1553. karthikpanchanathan@gmail.com http://buddha.bol.ucla.edu/ willem@frankenhuis.org http://www.willem.frankenhuis.org/
H. Clark Barrett
Affiliation:
Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture, Department of Anthropology, University of California–Los Angles, CA 90095-1553. karthikpanchanathan@gmail.com http://buddha.bol.ucla.edu/ willem@frankenhuis.org http://www.willem.frankenhuis.org/ Foundation for Psychocultural Research (FPR) – UCLA Center for Culture, Brain, and Development, University of California–Los Angles, CA 90095-1553. barrett@anthro.ucla.edu http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/barrett/
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We agree with Henrich et al. that documenting cultural universality and variability provides an indispensable window into human nature. We want to stress the mediating role development plays between evolution and culture. Moving beyond the mere documentation of universality or variability, developmental approaches can provide mechanistic explanations, linking ecology to phenotype. Combining phylogeny and adaptationism, evolutionary approaches can explain the properties of developmental systems.

Information

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 33 , Issue 2-3 , June 2010 , pp. 105 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Belsky, J., Steinberg, L. & Draper, P. (1991) Childhood experience, interpersonal development, and reproductive strategy: An evolutionary theory of socialization. Child Development 62:647–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Carroll, S. P. (1993) Divergence in male mating tactics between two populations of the soapberry bug: I. Guarding versus nonguarding. Behavioral Ecology 4:156–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carroll, S. P. & Corneli, P. S. (1995) Divergence in male mating tactics between two populations of the soapberry bug: II. Genetic change and the evolution of a plastic reaction norm in a variable social environment. Behavioral Ecology 6:46–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Csibra, G. & Gergely, G. (2009) Natural pedagogy. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13(4):148–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ellis, B. J., McFadyen-Ketchum, S., Dodge, K. A., Pettit, G. S. & Bates, J. E. (1999) Quality of early family relationships and individual differences in the timing of pubertal maturation in girls: A longitudinal test of an evolutionary model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 77:387–401.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Jablonka, E. & Lamb, M. (2005) Evolution in four dimensions. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lewontin, R. C. (1998) The evolution of cognition: Questions we will never answer. In: An invitation to cognitive science: Methods, models, and conceptual issues, vol. 4, ed. Scarborough, D. & Sternberg, S., pp. 107–32. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Richerson, P. J. & Boyd, R. (2005) Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Richerson, P. J., Boyd, R. & Bettinger, R. L. (2001) Was agriculture impossible during the Pleistocene but mandatory during the Holocene? A climate change hypothesis. American Antiquity 66:387–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar