M. Kay Martin

The Wrong Ape for Early Human Origins highlights the pervasive impact of the chimpanzee referential model on paleoanthropological theory. This work suggests the need to re-imagine the last common ancestor of chimps and humans based on a more generalized Miocene ape platform and the reliance of early hominins on epigenesis and creative niche construction.

The Chimpanzee as a Skewed Ancestral Model

The Wrong Ape for Early Human Origins

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.

Rethinking Our Evolutionary Past

Social DNA

Barbara Voorhies

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.

M. Kay Martin

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