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In 1871, Charles Darwin tackled “the highest and most interesting problem for the naturalist…the descent of man.” Challenging the status quo, Darwin deployed natural and sexual selection, and his recently adopted “survival of the fittest,” producing scenarios for the emergence of humankind. He explored evolutionary histories, anatomy, mental abilities, cultural capacities, race, and sex differences. Some conclusions were innovative and insightful. His recognition that differences between humans and other animals were of degree, not of kind, was trailblazing. His focus on cooperation, social learning, and cumulative culture remains core to human evolutionary studies. However, some of Darwin's other assertions were dismally, and dangerously, wrong. “Descent” is a text from which to learn, but not to venerate. Darwin saw humans as part of the natural world, animals that evolved (descended) from ancestral primates according to processes and patterns similar for all life. For Darwin, to know the human body and mind, we must know other animals and their (and our) descent with modification across lineages and time. But despite these ideal frames and some innovative inferences, “Descent” is often problematic, prejudiced, and injurious. Darwin thought he was relying on data, objectivity, and scientific thinking in describing human evolutionary outcomes. But for much of the book, he was not. “Descent,” like so many of the scientific tomes of Darwin's day, offers a racist and sexist view of humanity. Darwin portrayed Indigenous peoples of the Americas and Australia as less than Europeans in capacity and behavior. Peoples of the African continent were consistently referred to as cognitively depauperate, less capable, and of a lower rank than other races. These assertions are confounding because in “Descent” Darwin offered refutation of natural selection as the process differentiating races, noting that traits used to characterize them appeared nonfunctional relative to capacity for success. As a scientist this should have given him pause, yet he still, baselessly, asserted evolutionary differences between races. He went beyond simple racial rankings, offering justification of empire and colonialism, and genocide, through “survival of the fittest.” This too is confounding given Darwin's robust stance against slavery. In “Descent,” Darwin identified women as less capable than (White) men, often akin to the “lower races.” He described man as more courageous, energetic, inventive, and intelligent, invoking natural and sexual selection as justification, despite the lack of concrete data and biological assessment. His adamant assertions about the centrality of male agency and the passivity of the female in evolutionary processes, for humans and across the animal world, resonate with both Victorian and contemporary misogyny. In Darwin's own life he learned from an African-descendant South American naturalist, John Edmonstone in Edinburgh, and experienced substantive relations with the Fuegians aboard the HMS Beagle. His daughter Henrietta was a key editor of “Descent.” Darwin was a perceptive scientist whose views on race and sex should have been more influenced by data and his own lived experience. But Darwin's racist and sexist beliefs, echoing the views of scientific colleagues and his society, were powerful mediators of his perception of reality. Today, students are taught Darwin as the “father of evolutionary theory,” a genius scientist. They should also be taught Darwin as an English man with injurious and unfounded prejudices that warped his view of data and experience. Racists, sexists, and white supremacists, some of them academics, use concepts and statements “validated” by their presence in “Descent” as support for erroneous beliefs, and the public accepts much of it uncritically. “The Descent of Man” is one of the most influential books in the history of human evolutionary science. We can acknowledge Darwin for key insights but must push against his unfounded and harmful assertions. Reflecting on “Descent” today one can look to data demonstrating unequivocally that race is not a valid description of human biological variation, that there is no biological coherence to “male” and “female” brains or any simplicity in biological patterns related to gender and sex, and that “survival of the fittest” does not accurately represent the dynamics of evolutionary processes. The scientific community can reject the legacy of bias and harm in the evolutionary sciences by recognizing, and acting on, the need for diverse voices and making inclusive practices central to evolutionary inquiry. In the end, learning from “Descent” illuminates the highest and most interesting problem for human evolutionary studies today: moving toward an evolutionary science of humans instead of “man.”

The social media milieu in which we are enmeshed has substantive impacts on our beliefs and perceptions. Recent work has established that this can play a role in influencing understanding of, and reactions to, public health information. Twitter, in particular, appears to play a substantive role in the public health information ecosystem. From July 25th, 2020 to November 15th, 2020, we collected weekly tweets related to COVID19 keywords and assessed their networks, patterns and properties. Our analyses revealed the dominance of a handful of individual accounts as central structuring agents in the networks of tens of thousands of tweets and retweets, and thus millions of views, related to specific COVID19 keywords. These few individual accounts and the content of their tweets, mentions, and retweets are substantially overrepresented in terms of public exposure to, and thus interaction with, critical elements of public health information in the pandemic. Here we report on one particularly striking aspect of our dataset: the prominent position of @realdonaldtrump in Twitter networks related to four key terms of the COVID19 pandemic in 2020.

Robbing and bartering (RB) is a behavioral practice anecdotally reported in free-ranging commensal macaques. It usually occurs in two steps: after taking inedible objects (e.g., glasses) from humans, the macaques appear to use them as tokens, returning them to humans in exchange for food. While extensively studied in captivity, our research is the first to investigate the object/food exchange between humans and primates in a natural setting. During a 4-month study in 2010, we used both focal and event sampling to record 201 RB events in a population of long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis), including four neighboring groups ranging freely around Uluwatu Temple, Bali (Indonesia). In each group, we documented the RB frequency, prevalence and outcome, and tested the underpinning anthropogenic and demographic determinants. In line with the environmental opportunity hypothesis, we found a positive qualitative relation at the group level between time spent in tourist zones and RB frequency or prevalence. For two of the four groups, RB events were significantly more frequent when humans were more present in the environment. We also found qualitative partial support for the male-biased sex ratio hypothesis [i.e., RB was more frequent and prevalent in groups with higher ratios of (sub)adult males], whereas the group density hypothesis was not supported. This preliminary study showed that RB is a spontaneous, customary (in some groups), and enduring population-specific practice characterized by intergroup variation in Balinese macaques. As such, RB is a candidate for a new behavioral tradition in this species.

OBJECTIVES Cyclical submergence and re-emergence of the Sunda Shelf throughout the Pleistocene served as a dynamic biogeographic landscape, across which long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) have migrated and evolved. Here, we tested the integrity of the previously reported continental-insular haplotype divide reported among Y and mitochondrial DNA lineages across multiple studies. MATERIALS AND METHODS The continental-insular haplotype divide was tested by heavily sampling wild macaques from two important biogeographic regions within Sundaland: (1) Singapore, the southernmost tip of continental Asia and (2) Bali, Indonesia, the southeastern edge of the Indonesian archipelago, immediately west of Wallace's line. Y DNA was haplotyped for samples from Bali, deep within the Indonesian archipelago. Mitochondrial D-loop from both islands was analyzed against existing data using Maximum Likelihood and Bayesian approaches. RESULTS We uncovered both "continental" and "insular" Y DNA haplotypes in Bali. Between Singapore and Bali we found 52 unique mitochondrial haplotypes, none of which had been previously described. Phylogenetic analyses confirmed a major haplogroup division within Singapore and identified five new Singapore subclades and two primary subclades in Bali. DISCUSSION While we confirmed the continental-insular divide among mtDNA haplotypes, maintenance of both Y DNA haplotypes on Bali, deep within the Indonesian archipelago calls into question the mechanism by which Y DNA diversity has been maintained. It also suggests the continental-insular designation is less appropriate for Y DNA, leading us to propose geographically neutral Y haplotype designations.

A distinctive aspect of human behaviour is the ability to think symbolically. However, tracking the origin of this capability is controversial. From a Peircean perspective, to know if something truly is a symbol we need to know the cultural context in which it was created. Rather than initially asking if materials are symbols/symbolic, we offer that it is more salient to ask how they functioned as signs. Specifically we argue that using the Peircean distinction between qualisigns, sinsigns and legisigns provides support for this endeavour. The ‘flickering’ of early symbolic behaviour (the sporadic occurrences of objects with embedded social meanings in the Pleistocene archaeological record) can best be seen as sinsigns, whereas sites that show long-term presence of such materials are demonstrating the presence of legisigns: the codification of ideas. To illustrate this approach, we apply these ideas to three classes of artefacts, demonstrating how this system can address issues of relevance to palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists who often fetishize the symbolic as the one ability that makes us human.

Over the past 20 years, GPS collars have emerged as powerful tools for the study of nonhuman primate (hereafter, “primate”) movement ecology. As the size and cost of GPS collars have decreased and performance has improved, it is timely to review the use and success of GPS collar deployments on primates to date. Here we compile data on deployments and performance of GPS collars by brand and examine how these relate to characteristics of the primate species and field contexts in which they were deployed. The compiled results of 179 GPS collar deployments across 17 species by 16 research teams show these technologies can provide advantages, particularly in adding to the quality, quantity, and temporal span of data collection. However, aspects of this technology still require substantial improvement in order to make deployment on many primate species pragmatic economically. In particular, current limitations regarding battery lifespan relative to collar weight, the efficacy of remote drop-off mechanisms, and the ability to remotely retrieve data need to be addressed before the technology is likely to be widely adopted. Moreover, despite the increasing utility of GPS collars in the field, they remain substantially more expensive than VHF collars and tracking via handheld GPS units, and cost considerations of GPS collars may limit sample sizes and thereby the strength of inferences. Still, the overall high quality and quantity of data obtained, combined with the reduced need for on-the-ground tracking by field personnel, may help defray the high equipment cost. We argue that primatologists armed with the information in this review have much to gain from the recent, substantial improvements in GPS collar technology.

This conversation is prompted by continued frustration about how race is discussed and understood by the public and by those researchers who remain determined to draw clean lines around people who ...

Seeing bodies and evolutionary histories as quantifiable features that can be measured separately from the human cultural experience is an erroneous approach. Seeing cultural perceptions and the human experience as disentangled from biological form and function and evolutionary history is equally misguided. An integrative anthropology moves past dichotomous perspectives and seeks to entangle the “inside” and “outside,” methodologically and theoretically, to move beyond isolationist trends in understanding the human. In this paper I illustrate the underlying rationale for some anthropological lack of engagement with neo-Darwinian approaches and review contemporary evolutionary theory discussing how, in combination with a dynamic approach to human culture, it can facilitate integration in anthropology. Finally, I offer an overview of the human niche concept and propose a heuristic framework as a set of shared assumptions about human systems to help frame a sincerely anthropological and emphatically evolutio...

Both evolutionary/scientific and constructivist or humanistic approaches have brought valuable understandings to anthropology and continue to do so today. Discussions of the split(s) and possibilities of reintegration across anthropology have been valuable; however, practical reintegration will only come from a serious and open intellectual engagement with a diverse range of theoretical contexts and a direct connection to data. This volume is an attempt to provide innovative contexts for, and examples of, anthropologists reporting on their data and/or conceptualizing approaches to the data in ways that cross or straddle boundaries. While we offer niche construction theory and the extended evolutionary synthesis as common framework, the articles are not all in agreement on explanatory means and priorities. And this is a good thing. To develop an effective reintegration requires anthropologists to move away from artificial dichotomies and standing grudges and toward collaborations and a respect for theoreti...

Beaver Island, Michigan was a unique settlement location for Irish America in the late nineteenth century. Families of Irish descent migrated to northern Lake Michigan and reproduced many aspects of the rural, fishing and farming lifeways of Ireland. They had to negotiate the cultural landscape and material conditions that had previously been established on the island, notably by a Mormon sect that occupied the island between 1848 and 1856. The inheritance of landscapes by one community from another can be understood through the concept of niche construction theory. This can be used as a lens to understand how the Mormons shaped their cultural landscape and what this meant for the socio-ecological legacy taken over by their Irish replacements. We also notice the Irish influence on the Beaver Island Lumber Company who came after them. Utilising archaeological and historical data, we undertake a macro-analysis to investigate the shaping of structures and landscapes as interactive influences of one c...

As a foray into the material connections between humans and other primates, we use this chapter to argue that human bodies can be understood as the product of material interactions between species rather than bounded entities constituted by their differences. Exploring primate bodies as research tools, as food and kin, and as memory, we draw from Haraway, Bateson, and Latour to demonstrate how bodies are less defined by the boundaries of the skin and more so through their material and social interactions and the sharing of corporeal substances and experiences. Ultimately, we contend that at stake in a consideration of these material and bodily interactions is our very humanness as we humans realize that we have never been just human.

Agustin Fuentes compares three books on the origins, trajectory and implications of our group behaviour. Agustin Fuentes compares three books on the origins, trajectory and implications of our group behaviour.

Significance Recent views on violence emphasize the decline in proportions of war groups and casualties to populations over time and conclude that past small-scale societies were more violent than contemporary states. In this paper, we argue that these trends are better explained through scaling relationships between population and war group size and between war group size and conflict casualties. We test these relationships and develop measures of conflict investment and lethality that are applicable to societies across space and time. When scaling is accounted for, we find no difference in conflict investment or lethality between small-scale and state societies. Given the lack of population data for past societies, we caution against using archaeological cases of episodic conflicts to measure past violence., The proportions of individuals involved in intergroup coalitional conflict, measured by war group size (W), conflict casualties (C), and overall group conflict deaths (G), have declined with respect to growing populations, implying that states are less violent than small-scale societies. We argue that these trends are better explained by scaling laws shared by both past and contemporary societies regardless of social organization, where group population (P) directly determines W and indirectly determines C and G. W is shown to be a power law function of P with scaling exponent X [demographic conflict investment (DCI)]. C is shown to be a power law function of W with scaling exponent Y [conflict lethality (CL)]. G is shown to be a power law function of P with scaling exponent Z [group conflict mortality (GCM)]. Results show that, while W/P and G/P decrease as expected with increasing P, C/W increases with growing W. Small-scale societies show higher but more variance in DCI and CL than contemporary states. We find no significant differences in DCI or CL between small-scale societies and contemporary states undergoing drafts or conflict, after accounting for variance and scale. We calculate relative measures of DCI and CL applicable to all societies that can be tracked over time for one or multiple actors. In light of the recent global emergence of populist, nationalist, and sectarian violence, our comparison-focused approach to DCI and CL will enable better models and analysis of the landscapes of violence in the 21st century.

It is highly likely that there is a naturalness to a human imagination that facilitates engagement with, and being in, the world in ways that are distinct from those in other animals, even closely related hominins. A distinctively human imagination is part of the explanation for human evolutionary success. The combination of a niche-construction perspective with fossil and archeological evidence, highlighting the role of complexity in human evolution, adds to our understanding of a wholly human way of being. For humans, experiences in and perceptions of the world exist in a particular context wherein social relationships, landscapes, and biotic and abiotic elements are embedded in an experiential reality that is infused with a potential for symbolic meaning. Taking this approach provides a small, and hopefully fruitful, addition to the toolkit of inquiry for anthropologists, theologians, and others interested in reconstructing the path to humanity and the possible roles that imagination, belief, and religion have played and continue to play.

Little is known regarding behavioral and social responses of free-ranging primates to demographic changes emerging from significant mortality events. Here, we report on the activity patterns and intergroup sociospatial relationships in a commensal population of long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) in Bali, Indonesia, that underwent a significant mortality event in summer 2012. During the period of interest, we noted heightened mortality in three of the five social groups present in this population, with adult females and juveniles experiencing higher mortality rates than adult and subadult males. Limited diagnostic data regarding pathogen identification and a lack of any conclusive etiology of the deaths prevent our ascertainment of the agent(s) responsible for the observed mortality, but given the characteristics of the event we assume it was caused by a transmissible disease outbreak. Comparing the pre- and post-mortality event periods, we found significant differences in activity patterns, including a decreased proportion of affiliation in adult females. This result is likely indicative of enhanced social instability induced by the high mortality of adult females that constitute the stable core of macaque social structure. A higher social tension between groups after the mortality event was indicated by more frequent and intense agonistic intergroup encounters. Intergroup conflict success was inversely proportional to the rate of mortality a group suffered. Our results illustrate how changes in demographic structure caused by significant mortality events may have substantial consequences on behavior and social dynamics in primate groups and at the level of a population.

A niche is the structural, temporal, and social context in which a species exists. Over the last two million years, the human lineage underwent clear morphological changes alongside less easily measurable, but significant, behavioral and cognitive shifts as it forged, and was shaped by, new niches. During this time period, core human patterns emerged, including the following: hypercooperation; lengthy childhood and complex parenting; intricate and diverse foraging and hunting patterns; novel and dynamic material and symbolic cultures; and complex communication and information sharing, eventually resulting in language. Approaches to human evolution grounded in paleoanthropology and archaeology offer fundamental insights into our past, and traditional evolutionary theory offers a strong grounding for explaining them. However, given the centrality of distinctive physiological, social, semiotic, and cognitive processes in human evolutionary histories, a broader anthropological approach can facilitate additional understanding of the human story. An integrative anthropology, reaching across subfields and foci, combined with contemporary evolutionary theory is an approach that can enhance our abilities to model and understand human evolution. [integrative anthropology, niche construction, evolution, extended evolutionary synthesis, Homo, semiosis, Pleistocene]

Human nature is a contested concept and notions of it vary across disciplines. Despite this diversity, three basic notions of human nature emerge. One identifies human nature with properties that are innate, hardwired or products of some kind of necessary essence. Another understands it as consisting of properties that make human unique or distinct from non-human animals. Finally, some seek human nature by attempting to identify universal or near-universal properties of humans. While the sciences might not give us a robust form of innate or hardwired human nature, “human nature” as a concept might still serve other, non-scientific, goals.

We are in the Anthropocene. For millennia, human actions have been shaping the world to the degree that they are inscribed in the geological and ecological record. Recently, this has been occurring with increasing speed and influence. This means we need to be asking integrative and effective questions about the world and how we relate to and in it. Human niche construction has broad and deep effects not just on landscapes and environments, but on the myriad of other beings sharing space with us. Humans are self-appointed ecosystem managers and lead actors in seeking sustainability for planetary and local ecosystems. In order to accomplish this, we need to better understand how anthromes are shaped, inhabited and altered. To this end, we present two different examples of anthropogenic landscapes; one in Ethiopia and one in Bali, Indonesia. These are landscapes that are co-constructed by multiple species through complex webs of ecologies, economies and histories and represent the way that humans are drawn into relationships with non-humans; relationships which in turn alter landscapes.

Data from archaeology and paleoanthropology directly challenge the validity of the basic assumptions of the CLASH model. By not incorporating a “deep time” perspective, the hypothesis lacks the evolutionary baseline the authors seek to infer in validating the model.

SUMMARYHelminthes have the capacity to modulate host immunity, leading to positive interactions with coinfecting microparasites. This phenomenon has been primarily studied during coinfections with a narrow range of geo-helminthes and intracellular microparasites in human populations or under laboratory conditions. Far less is known regarding differences in coinfection dynamics between helminth types, the range of microparasites that might be affected or the overall community-level effects of helminth infections on microparasites in wild systems. Here, we analysed the presence/absence and abundance patterns of enteric parasites in long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) on the island of Bali, Indonesia, to assess whether naturally occurring helminth infections were associated with increased shedding of the most common intracellular (Cryptosporidiumspp.,Isosporaspp.) and extracellular (Entamoebaspp.,Giardiaspp.) microparasites. We also comparatively assessed the statistical correlations of different helminth taxa with microparasite shedding to determine if there were consistent relationships between the specific helminth taxa and microparasites. Helminth infections were associated with increased shedding of both intracellular and extracellular microparasites. Platyhelminthes repeatedly displayed strong positive correlations with several microparasites; while nematodes did not. Our results indicate that helminthes can influence microparasite community shedding dynamics under wild conditions, but that trends may be driven by a narrow range of helminthes.

Human activities directly and indirectly influence the gene flow of wildlife populations, significantly affecting their population structure. On Bali, Indonesia, long-tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis) populations are associated with relatively undisturbed forest remnants, providing resources for macaques through human worship practices. To evaluate the long-term impact of this anthropogenic landscape on gene flow in macaques, we measured the microsatellite heterozygosity and genetic distance of 15 populations across the island. We then used assignment tests to measure more contemporary movement between populations. We found significant population structure across the island and found that despite this significant structuring, contemporary macaque dispersal across the island is relatively high, with a number of first generation migrants detected. Moreover, we identified one population in the core of the island that acts as a magnet for migrants, receiving 50 % of the first generation migrants in this analysis. Finally, we used individual-level Bayesian clustering analysis combined with kriging techniques to measure fine-scale genetic structure and identify significant boundaries relative to the landscape. Significant genetic structure suggests that the existence of forested temple sites and long-term co-existence with humans may have contributed to relative isolation between populations, even though macaques are known for their high dispersal abilities. However, more recent changes in land use practices in Bali, such as reallocation of lands for tourism, are influencing the patterns of dispersal and increasing the movement of individuals between novel sites, shifting the population structure of the macaques and potentially reducing island-wide genetic diversity.

For all its virtues in binding strangers together, religious cooperation is born out of competition and conflict between groups… Big God religions are both the fire department and the arsonist. (No...

The quest for understanding the human propensity for religious imagination can be aided by investigating more fully the core role of the evolutionary transition between becoming and being human. A distinctively human imagination is part of the explanation for human evolutionary success. Significant factors can be found in the evolutionary patterns and processes in the genus Homo during the Pleistocene, especially the later part of that epoch approximately 400–100,000 years ago. The combination of a niche construction perspective with fossil and archeological evidence, highlighting the role of cooperation in human evolution, adds to our understanding of a wholly human way of being, our socio-cognitive niche. This is a niche wherein experiences in, and perceptions of, of the world exist in a particular semiotic context: social relationships, landscapes, and biotic and abiotic elements are embedded in an experiential reality that is infused with a potential for symbolic meaning derived from more than the mat...

When choosing their sleeping sites, primates make adaptive trade-offs between various biotic and abiotic constraints. In human-modified environments, anthropic factors may play a role. We assessed the influence of ecological (predation), social (intergroup competition), and anthropic (proximity to human settlements) factors in sleeping site choice by long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) occupying a habitat at the interface of natural forests and human-modified zones in Bali Barat National Park, Indonesia. Over the course of 56 nights, we collected data relating to physical features of sleeping trees, patterns of the use of sleeping sites within the home range, pre-sleep behavior, diurnal ranging patterns and availability of natural and human food. Overall, the macaques used 17 sleeping sites with 37 sleeping trees. When the monkeys slept in forest zones, they selected sleeping trees that had larger trunks but were not significantly taller than surrounding trees. Though the macaques rarely re-used sleeping sites on consecutive nights, they frequently re-used four sites over the study period. The group favored sleeping within the core area of its home range, despite the occurrence of frequent agonistic intergroup encounters there. Macaques preferentially selected sleeping trees located within or near human-modified zones, especially when human food was abundant and natural food was scarce. These results partially support the hypothesis that long-tailed macaques choose their sleeping sites to avoid predation; proximity to human settlements appears to be the primary factor influencing sleeping site choice in this primate species. Our results reflect the strong influence that anthropic factors have on primates, which subsist in increasingly human-dominated landscapes.

The risks of harm to nonhuman primates, and the absence of benefits for them, are critically important to decisions about nonhuman primate research. Current guidelines for review and practice tend to be permissive for nonhuman primate research as long as minimal welfare requirements are fulfilled and human medical advances are anticipated. This situation is substantially different from human research, in which risks of harms to the individual subject are typically reduced to the extent feasible. A risk threshold is needed for the justification of research on nonhuman primates, comparable to the way risk thresholds are set for vulnerable human subjects who cannot provide informed consent. Much of the laboratory research conducted today has inadequate standards, leading to common physical, psychological, and social harms.

Aggression and peripheralization between adult and subadult male macaques have been postulated as proximate causes for dispersal, but empirical evidence for this relationship is scarce. To investigate the level of aggression and peripheralization experienced by subadult males, we conducted focal animal and scan sampling of two long-tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis) groups in the highly anthropogenic environment of Singapore’s Central Nature Reserve. We followed two subadult males each in two groups and compared (1) aggression between subadult and adult males and (2) peripheralization measured by (a) greater interindividual distances, (b) more noninteractive behaviors, and (c) fewer interactive behaviors. After 72 focal hours, results suggest varying levels of peripheralization and consistently low levels of aggression among all four males. Data herein call into question the role of aggression in intragroup interactions. Differences in affiliation patterns appear to be core factors in determining the individual degree of peripheralization. Ultimately, strategic choices related to an individual’s place within the natal group (e.g., affiliations, rank of relatives) may be important to cost–benefit assessments; these choices have significant implications in both the short term (i.e., dispersal timing) and long term (i.e., reproductive success). This study is a first step toward understanding macaque behavior in anthropogenic environments; further exploration is needed to anticipate how landscape changes might influence macaque dispersal patterns. Greater understanding will come from recognition that social mechanisms are highly individualized and constantly dynamic, especially for highly cognitive, social species, and in ever increasingly dynamic anthropogenic environments.