Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationIn this dissertation, I follow three avenues of inquiry regarding status competition among the Bardi - a group of part-time foragers living in northwestern Australia. The first focuses on how the current array of status-linked behaviors came to be so widely used. After a brief introduction, I present findings from a year-long ethnographic study of Bardi men. I review the recent, postcontact history of the region with special emphasis on venues of status competition. Relying upon comparative and historical evidence as well as theoretical inferences, I detail how two novel status-linked behaviors (i.e., wage labor and dealing with bureaucracy) emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century as well as the effects of religious and governmental interventions on more traditional activities such as big game hunting and gaining cultural knowledge. Describing how these options emerged provides key insights into the contemporary competitive environment in Bardi country, but a comprehensive picture of male competition there requires a sense of how men make use of these behaviors. The third chapter therefore engages the observation that men have many more options for seeking status when compared to other primate males, yet we know relatively little about how men cope with the sometimes-overwhelming array of opportunities. Focusing on whether men constrain their efforts to just a few behaviors or whether they make use of every available opportunity, I find that the most prominent men are known for their success in most, if not all, domains of status competition. In the fourth chapter, my coauthors and I build upon lessons from the Bardi case in reviewing distinctive attributes of men's competitive behavior. We begin with the observation that, as compared to status seeking among other male primates, men rely less on within-group violence, make use of a wider range of behaviors, and readily incorporate new opportunities into their behavioral repertoire. Through a survey of relevant ethnographic, primatological, and experimental evidence, we tie these characteristics to the uniquely human aptitude for and interest in sharing mental states with others

Grandmothers and the evolution of human longevity: a review of findings and future directions

journal articleWomen and female great apes both continue giving birth into their forties, but not beyond. However humans live much longer than other apes do.[1] Even in hunting and gathering societies, where the mortality rate is high, adult life spans average twice those of chimpanzees, which become decrepit during their fertile years and rarely survive them.[2, 3] Since women usually remain healthy through and beyond childbearing age, human communities include substantial proportions of economically productive postmenopausal women.[4-7] A grandmother hypothesis8-12 may explain why greater longevity evolved in our lineage while female fertility still ends at ancestral ages. This hypothesis has implications for the evolution of a wide array of human features. Here we review some history of the hypothesis, recent findings, and questions for ongoing research