🌴🌞🌊 We are recruiting 🌊🌞🌴 UCSB seeks a lecturer broadly trained across anthropological fields to teach anthropological approaches to health. More info: recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/JPF03100 UCSB is an Equal Opportunity Employer Expected salary range: $70,977–$98,249

From diversity to flexibility: Seasonality as the forgotten dividend of Man the Hunter🏺🧪 @ceciliapad.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... 60 years later, Venkataraman et al have done something important: they have rescued MTH from misconceptions that have followed from its own title.

🚨New paper!🚨 I really enjoyed @vivek123.bsky.social & colleagues' article reflecting on the diversity of perspectives within the Man The Hunter conference. My commentary out today discussing not only diversity across societies but within them🤩: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... Thoughts welcome!

For a century, this theory of human origins has died and returned. To free it from limbo, we must disentangle its many meanings. An Essay by @vivek123.bsky.social

I can't access this (can anyone send?), but I think I agree with what it probably says! Anthropology is needed now more than ever.

Not up for a 15,000 word manuscript about the intellectual history of Man the Hunter? Fair enough! Instead, check out my popular article published today in @aeon.co aeon.co/essays/why-m...

Thanks to the Baylor media office for doing a nice write-up of my recent PNAS Nexus article with @kris-smith.bsky.social. Of course, we also saw tremendous generosity in these economic experiments (!), but "life-like" sharing patterns only occurred when people took from peers in surplus.

New paper out in ProcB! Congrats to lead author Rachel Peterson and the Orang Asli Health and Lifeways Project (OAHeLP) team! "Early life environments shape adult cardiometabolic health during rapid lifestyle change"

Our new paper is out in Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health! Led by the amazing @marinawatowich.bsky.social What drives worsening cardiometabolic health during urbanization in Indigenous populations? We expected it to be diet. But actually, it was the built environment.

There is a fully-funded PhD position at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology to pursue dissertation research among the Mayangna of Nicaragua, expanding a longitudinal study of subsistence strategies and behavioral ecology. Please share the posting! www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit...

1. In this paper, we included this word cloud of the top 200 words in the volume Man the Hunter. A reader wondered how could the top 200 words in a book with the title "Man the Hunter" include "woman" but not "man"? Doh! 🧪 #rstats #BioAnth #AcademicSky 🧵

From the SAPIENS.org archive. www.sapiens.org/biology/labo...

I really enjoyed this paper. I wish more people wrote these kinds of intellectual histories of complex debates quoting both sides in their own words. Bravo! That said, I have two issues I'd love to see discussed in the promised commentaries:

Our review of the import of the Man the Hunter conference and volume, which contrary to recent media coverage actually expressed diverse views on hunter-gatherers and inspired decades of research, is now published 🧪 #BioAnth authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

I’m happy to announce that our paper "The Meanings and Dividends of Man the Hunter" has now been published in Evolution and Human Behavior. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"Man the Hunter" is often conflated with Dart's "killer ape theory"; A pity because, though imperfect, the MTH conference was a departure from previous Hobbesian colonial Hunter-Gatherer narratives. In this new Target Article we map out some of that intellectual history.

I’m happy to announce that our paper "The Meanings and Dividends of Man the Hunter" has now been published in Evolution and Human Behavior. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Priceless interview for all anthropologists and fieldworkers. Thank you, @ilarimakela.bsky.social & RB Lee!! Lee’s discussions on establishing new field sites closely parallel my experiences in the Omo in Ethiopia with the @omovalleyresearchproject.org

I've been using this image for years to illustrate prestige bias in my lecture on cultural evolution, assuming everyone would recognize him. This year I asked the class if they knew who this was, and the only student who did was the one black student. He was shocked that no one else did. 🧪 #BioAnth

Women’s mental health: current status and evolutionary perspectives by Carol Worthman | Evolutionary Human Sciences | Cambridge Core - www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

New episode (1218), with Dr. Edward Hagen. We discuss whether sex is binary, the distinction between sex and gender, and more. #Anthropology #Biology #Science YouTube: youtu.be/DjIqDREBOqI Podcast: bit.ly/4avxMHW

1. After I posted my critical review of @anthrofuentes.bsky.social Sex is a Spectrum, a colleague pointed out that his figure of adult heights by sex (bottom panel👇) can't be right: there aren't that many US adults shorter than 4' or taller than 7' Turns out Fuentes' data are made up 🧪 #BioAnth 🧵

A much-needed critique of the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis (EES) as applied to human evolution, by @evoroseman.bsky.social and Ben Auerbach (2026). Evolving a Field: Can Evolutionary Theory Provide What the Study of Human Evolution Requires? 🧪 #BioAnth onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

The International Society for Hunter-Gatherer Research are delighted to announce that CHAGS 14 will take place in Belém, Brazil Mon 12 - Fri 16 July 2027. Events/trips immediately before/afterwards. Tx to hosts: Goeldi Museum & Federal Univ. of Pará. More details to follow. Please share widely!

A new podcast interview by @ilarimakela.bsky.social with Richard B. Lee about Man the Hunter! Should be fascinating. onhumans.substack.com/p/the-origin...

As we've argued in a recent preprint, Ardrey might have benefited from paying more heed to the anthropologists. osf.io/preprints/os...

Everyone should read the Spandrels paper. But too often it's discussed without context of the other contributions. Esp. Clutton-Brock & Harvey on how the comparative method can be used to test adaptive hypothesis, and Cain’s final critique (which SJG called “tame” compared to the oral remarks).

Our new paper in Hunter-Gatherer Research! We explored women’s decision-making power within households in two subsistence communities with different gender norms (BaYaka foragers & Bandongo fisher-farmers) in the Congolese rainforest ✨ www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3...

Latest crop of early online papers at HGR includes some bangers - if I do say so myself. Not just this report on BaYaka Women's autonomy and my own article about cage traps, but also Sterelny on quasi-darwinian mechanisms in cultural evolution. www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/abs/10.3...

"The problem...which recurs throughout 'Spandrels', is not that this criticism is wrong, it’s that Gould & Lewontin...make only cursory and superficial remarks about how test those alternatives, or about how to pursue an alternative research programme built on different conceptual foundations"

Not to forget this extremely interesting paper on consensus-based decision-making in egalitarian societies. bsky.app/profile/vive...

And don't miss out on Vivek's absolutely sterling interview with Bob Kelly. bsky.app/profile/vive...

Gearing up to teach my grad Theory class again, I am reminded that the Spandrels of San Marcos is not a good paper. dynamicecology.wordpress.com/2011/08/26/w... (but I'll probably assign it anyway, for precisely this reason)

Great to read Vivek's interview with Bob - lots of interesting things here. And not just the insights into Binford's data collection 😱. Thanks to both Vivek and Bob for the publication!

Check out my interview with Bob Kelly in Hunter Gatherer Research. The view from 30,000 feet: An interview with archaeologist Robert L Kelly liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/...

New article in Hunter Gatherer Research! Foraging societies practice consensus-based politics. We conduct a xc review and argue that it helps to boost collective intelligence. Consensus, cooperation and collective intelligence in foraging societies liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/...

🎄 New paper! 🎁 Since the 20s it's been said that "the Hadza don't use traps". Except sporadic snaring, none have been reported. So I was excited to find baited cage traps in use. More exciting, this was cross-cultural transmission — seldom seen in action! 1/​5 tinyurl.com/cagetrap

Perhaps a late Xmas/Chanukah/Festivus/Kwanzaa present for some research hot shot currently not in Canada but who might like to move here - the new Impact+ Research Chairs. Note the strategic areas in Arctic, environment, climate resilience and water security. 🧪⚒️ careers.ucalgary.ca/jobs/1717054...

It never ceases to amaze me how flexible and multi-purpose the human foot can be. Pics taken with the Batek of Malaysia.

In episode 1022, I talk with Dr. Vivek Venkataraman about tree climbing, running, and hunting across human societies. #Anthropology #Science youtu.be/QirFyPqN3e0

"At Brown and Harvard, more than 20 percent of undergraduates are registered as disabled. At Amherst, that figure is 34 percent." Accommodation Nation: America’s colleges have an extra-time-on-tests problem. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

Check out our new paper in the journal Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, led by Ian J. Wallace. "Dampened inflammation and reduced risk of osteoarthritis among non-industrialized societies" www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Bruce Winterhalder was once asked to share some professional insights. Here they are:

A great piece on the women's hunting debate by Elena Bridgers that covers some of our work: elenabridgers.substack.com/p/did-women-...

A great piece on the women's hunting debate by Elena Bridgers that covers some of our work: elenabridgers.substack.com/p/did-women-...

My review of Sex is a Spectrum, by Agustín Fuentes 🧪 #BioAnth blog.edhagen.net/posts/2025-0...

Some thoughts on how preferences for #leaders change with our environments: Leaders for the World We Think We Live In | Psychology Today www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ecol... #LeadSciSky #EvPsych #CultEvol #socialpsyc #BehSci 🧪 @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social @psychologytoday.com

Do not accept the premise that education is to blame for abysmal jobs outcomes. “The fantasy economy's framing of economic inequality… focuses exclusively on education…deflects attention away from decades of public policies and changing business practices that have…contributed to stagnating wages”

Published two years ago in @science.org: "Body-based units of measure in cultural evolution" We looked into how, and why, human societies have measured things with their bodies. A little thread about the deep ancestry and cross-cultural heritage of measurement: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...