Sex at Dawn

29. By comparison, Chagnon’s total time among the Yanomami adds up to about five years. Readers interested in knowing more about the Yanomani might start with Good (1991). This is a very personal and accessible account of his time living with them (and ultimately, taking a wife there).

Tierney (2000) outlines the case against Chagnon, though going far beyond the critiques we’ve outlined here. Ferguson

(1995) offers an in-depth analysis of Chagnon’s calculations and conclusions. For more of Ferguson’s views on the origins of war, the following two papers can be downloaded from his departmental web page (http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/socant/ brian.htm): Tribal, “Ethnic,” and Global Wars, and Ten Points on War, which includes a broad discussion of biology, archaeology, and the Yanomami controversy. Borofsky

(2005) offers a balanced account of the controversy and the context in which it occurred. Of course, Chagnon’s work is readily available as well.

30. Quoted in Tierney (2000), p. 32.

31. Washington Post review of Darkness in El Dorado: Jungle Fever, by Marshall Sahlins, Sunday, December 10, 2000, p. X01.

32. Chagnon (1968), p. 12.

33. Tierney (2000), p. 14.

34. Sponsel (1998), p. 104.

35. October 23, 2008.

Chapter 14: The Longevity Lie (Short?)

1. Note that these numbers are for demonstration purposes only. To keep it simple (and since it’s meaningless anyway), we haven’t adjusted for male/female size differences, regional variations in average infant skeleton sizes, and so on.

2. October 6, 2008.

3. Adovasio et al. (2007), p. 129.

4. Gina Kolata, “Could We Live Forever?,” November 11, 2003.

5. Scientific American, March 6, p. 57.

6. Harris (1989), pp. 211-212.

7. http://www.gendercide.org/case_infanticide.html.

8. These numbers don’t include the selective abortion of female fetuses, which is widespread in these countries. For example, Agence-France Presse reports that selective abortions have left China with 32 million more men than women, and that in just one year (2005), more than 1.1 million more boys than girls were born in China.

9. Philosopher Peter Singer has written thought-provoking books and essays on the question of how to calculate the value of human versus nonhuman life. See, for example, Singer (1990).

10. Cited in Blurton Jones et al. (2002).

11. Blurton Jones et al. (2002).

12. See Blurton Jones et al. (2002).

13. An excellent paper highly recommended to readers interested in these matters is Kaplan et al. (2000). The paper can be downloaded at Kaplan’s faculty website: www.unm.edu/~hebs/pubs_kaplan.html.

14. From the paper by Kaplan et al. cited above, p. 171.

15. Readers interested in seeing how these same agricultural curses are playing out in the modern world might want to read Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto

(2009).

16. Larrick et al. (1979).

17. Source: Diamond (1997).

18. Edgerton (1992), p. 111.

19. Cohen et al. (2009).

20. Horne et al. (2008).

21. While we’re on the subject of hammocks, we’d like to take this opportunity to formally propose that hammocks—not spear points or stone blades—were the first example of human technology. That no hard evidence for this proposal has been unearthed is due to hammocks being made of perishable fibers. (Who wants a stone hammock?) Even chimps and bonobos fashion primitive hammocks by weaving together tree branches for sleeping platforms.

22. See Sapolsky (1998) for an excellent overview of how stress affects us. On the question of human/bonobo similarities concerning stress, it’s interesting to note that when bombs fell near them in World War II, all the bonobos in the zoo died from the stress the explosions caused, while none of the chimps perished (according to de Waal and Lanting, 1998).

23. The New Yorker, June 26, 2006, p. 76.

Part IV: Bodies in Motion

1. This quote is taken from a debate between Gould on one side and Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennett on the other. Well worth reading, if you like high-brow discussion with plenty of low blows, is “Evolution: The Pleasures of Pluralism,” The New York Review of Books 44(11): 47-52.

2. Potts (1992), p. 327.

Chapter 15: Little Big Man

1. Miller (2000), p. 169.

2. Though not always, as other factors can influence body-size dimorphism, apart from the intensity of male-male mating conflict. See Lawler (2009), for example.