My Primary Blog
Categories
- Introduction
- Ch.1) Homo Narcissus – Just an Animal?
- Ch.2) God: Uber-Pater or El Presidente?
- Ch.3) Nurture and the Swiss-Army Knife of Human Nature
- Ch.4) Bumpkins in the Night
- Ch.5) Comparing Adams and Orangutans
- Ch.6) Power/Size
- Ch.7) Eye Contact
- Ch.8) Threat Displays
- Ch.9) Sexual Primacy Sexual Jealousy
- Ch.10) First Fruits
- Uncategorized
- Ch.11) A Throne of Grooming
- Ch.12) Will the Real Proto-Human Please Stand Up
- Ch.13) The Egalitarian Ape
- Ch.14) The Pacts Within a Pack
- Ch.15) Benefits to Subordinates
- Ch.16) Protection from Them
- Ch.17) Proximity to Bounty
- Ch.18) Science and the Educated Guess
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Recent Posts
- 15.10) Rules from an Absent Alpha
- 15.11) He Knows When You are Sleeping
- 15.2) Calming the Social Seas
- 15.4) Impulse Control, Biblical Style
- 15.5) Religion and Social Order
- 15.6) Conforming to the Order
- 15.7) A Divine Referee
- 15.8) Super Mediation
- 15.9) The Wisdom of God
- 16.1) Protection from Them
- 16.2) The Protection of Powerful Agents
- 16.3) Xenophobia and the Ethnocentric God
- 16.4) A Supernatural Leader in War
- 16.5) A Conduit to Social Power
- 17.1) Spiritual Hunger, Real Hunger
- 17.2) Keeper of the Garden
- 17.3) Take This Bread
- 17.4) Bounty and the Birth of Leaders
- 18) Science and the Educated Guess
- Ch.1.1) The Way of All Flesh
Category Archives: Ch.3) Nurture and the Swiss-Army Knife of Human Nature
Ch.3.1) Gaps in the Brain and a Jack of Many Trades
[O]ne can prove the “naturalness” of almost any social pattern by selecting the appropriate species. The variety is immense. A strong mother-offspring bond is found in all primates; beyond this, virtually everything exists, from monogamy to promiscuity, from despotism to … Continue reading
Ch.3.2) The Creative Confines of Nature
I do not suggest that the volatile, emotional chimpanzee is by nature a peaceful species, but they have the potential to be so. Indeed, the recent Gombe and Mahale evidence is that they also have the potential to be extremely … Continue reading
Ch.3.3) A Cerebral Confederacy
[M]ost human beings don’t live in an environment much like the one for which their minds were designed. Environments — even the environments for which organisms are designed — are unpredictable. That is why behavioral flexibility evolved in the first … Continue reading