They have identified, for instance, several genes thought to control human dispositions, including aspects of temperament and cognitive skills.Ĭomparative Ethology. Scientists in this field, drawing on research in genetics and on a growing number of studies on twins and adopted children, focus their research on the hereditary components of the mind. Patterns that recur across all societies, regardless of time and place, are thought to have a strong biogenetic origin.īehavioral Genetics. By studying societies past and present, Darwinian anthropologists are identifying cultural universals with regard to gender relations, art and ritual, language and thought, and trading and competition. The central proposition of evolutionary psychology-that human beings retain the mentality of their Stone Age forebears-gathers its strength from six convergent sources of scientific research.Īnthropology. You can take the person out of the Stone Age, evolutionary psychologists contend, but you can’t take the Stone Age out of the person. Human beings are, in other words, hardwired. Homo sapiens emerged on the Savannah Plain some 200,000 years ago, yet according to evolutionary psychology, people today still seek those traits that made survival possible then: an instinct to fight furiously when threatened, for instance, and a drive to trade information and share secrets. A convergence of research and discoveries in genetics, neuropsychology, and paleobiology, among other sciences, evolutionary psychology holds that although human beings today inhabit a thoroughly modern world of space exploration and virtual realities, they do so with the ingrained mentality of Stone Age hunter-gatherers.

But over the past several years, evolutionary psychology as a discipline has gathered both momentum and respect.

New fields of science don’t emerge in a flash, and evolutionary psychology-sometimes called modern Darwinism-is no exception.

Being a primal hunter