WHEN women researchers write on female evolution, it鈥檚 time to pay attention.
Given the bias against women both as science professionals and agents in
prehistory, The Evolving Female (edited by Mary Ellen Morbeck, Alison
Galloway and Adrienne Zihlman, Princeton University Press,
拢19.95/$27.95, ISBN 0691027471) and Women in Human
Evolution (edited by Lori Hager, Routledge, 拢15.99, ISBN 0415108349)
represent special achievements.
It took the influence of feminism in the 1970s to puncture the 鈥淢an the
Hunter鈥� concept of early humanity, as Hager鈥檚 contributors describe. Before
then, hunting, the tools it required and the copious meat it was assumed to have
delivered were considered not only pivotal but utterly masculine.
Superior field methods, and a more critical approach, now suggest that
meat-eating and the use of stone tools probably arose when early humans
scavenged the kills of big cats for bone marrow. Organised hunting came later,
and probably only rarely provided the bulk of the diet.
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So early division of labour around hunting seems much less certain. Gilda
Morelli鈥檚 study of the limited sexual division of labour among today鈥檚 young Efe
foragers in central Africa, in The Evolving Female, neatly underlines
this point.
And if getting meat required no hunting, what is to have prevented females
from acquiring both the taste for flesh and tools to satisfy it? Fire, language,
and symbolism, once tacitly assumed to be somehow linked to hunting, make just
as much sense as female inspirations鈥攁s these two books assert.
Both of these books may mark something of a turning point in palaeoanthropology. They
deserve to appear quickly in university libraries and lecture notes.
The unfortunately titled Evolution of Social Behaviour Patterns in
Primates and Man (edited by W. G. Runciman, John Maynard Smith and Robin
Dunbar, Oxford University Press, 拢25, ISBN 0197261647) gives a good
selection of the clever but rather uncoordinated theories that still dominate
the mainstream. Among these papers from a 1995 conference, those which stand out
are Robert Foley on the role of ecology, Steven Mithen on ancient consciousness,
Leslie Aiello on bipedalism and language, and Christophe Boesch on chimpanzee
culture.
The focus on adult social organisation in evolutionary studies may be
something of an artefact. Primates are long-lived, and field trips short. So
there are many 鈥渃ross-sectional鈥� studies on, say, relations between the sexes in
a large group over a short period; and little of the 鈥渓ongitudinal鈥� work needed
to elucidate relations between generations鈥攖he real grist of
evolution.
Long-term studies are now, however, beginning to yield results. It seems that
the effect of individuals鈥� current social status on the reproductive success of
their descendants is complex, and highly variable between species. In animals
with long periods of dependency, we may eventually find simpler answers by
looking at parental care as an factor influencing subsequent reproductive
success.
The weighty Parental Care (edited by Jay Rosenblatt and Charles
Snowdon, Academic Press, 拢75/$99, ISBN 0120045257) covers
invertebrates through to primates, and is a welcome update in this difficult
field. There is much physiology and behaviour, and an intriguing theme which
examines links between embryology, physiology and parental activity. But
evolutionary context is largely missing鈥攅vidence that this fascinating
field is still at an early stage.
This constraint is no barrier to the delightful A Natural History of
Parenting by Susan Allport (Harmony, $23, ISBN 0517707993).
Observant and witty, Allport is a science writer, sheep breeder, keen naturalist
and mother of two. She draws on all this experience to speculate, for instance,
about the dawning sense of parental responsibility, anxiety and joy that must
have livened up the long haul through the lower Stone Age.
Her thoughtful remarks on this topic will possibly appear naively unguarded
to some academic readers. And there are some anachronisms in the biology too,
such as Allport鈥檚 certainty that birds can鈥檛 smell. But this is good popular
writing with some valuable ideas that deserve academic attention.
Let鈥檚 hope professionals of both sexes will soon be pursuing the subject of
parenting in the Palaeolithic. And I look forward to reading these authors on a
topic that might treat the achievements of both sexes more dispassionately
still鈥攖he child as an active agent in evolution.