Archive for the ‘The Avian Mammal’ Category
The Mammal That Pair-Bonds Like A Bird
Since our ancestors lived in the trees, we have undergone two adaptations, both of which were an understandable response to evolutionary pressures but whose combination is really quite a bad idea. These two adaptations are the upright posture and the big brain. The pelvic changes of the first adaptation have made it very difficult to […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, The Avian Mammal
An Economic Institution?
Anthropologists aver that human marriage is more economic than reproductive, but a textbook of evolutionary biology points out that we could say the same for the other animals as well, as many engage in shared housekeeping tasks. Economics is in any case the handmaiden of, and perhaps a subset of reproduction; that is, any behaviour […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, The Avian Mammal
Nostalgia For The Longhouse
The evolutionary biologists and anthropologists reckon that we spent a million years or so as small groups of hunter-gatherers. Not isolated, for there was exchange of ideas, goods and sexual partners with other groups, but always in a community several score strong. Our brain seems to be wired to keep track of 120 known individuals […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, The Avian Mammal
Keeping Parents Away From Children
It is a basic assumption of our sentimentalised nuclear-family society that children should be brought up by their parents; which is not to say that this is inevitable, natural or sensible. Throughout the history of the world, vast numbers of children have been brought up by someone other than their parents. In some communities, children […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, The Avian Mammal
It Takes A Village…
There is a well-known saying that it takes a village to raise a child. The reason is apparently that other villagers are supposed to help both discipline and advise and assist the child. After all, if it is to become a part of the community, the community needs to help with that integration. If that […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, The Avian Mammal
The Invisibility Of Work
It is said that all teenagers pass through a stage in which they think their parents are idiots. Some of them are correct in this belief while others are not. Is this development, however, such a cosmic constant as we assume? Did the young hunter-gatherer always and necessarily think his pop was a doofus? I […]
In: PARENTAL STATUS TECHNOLOGY, The Avian Mammal
