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20 - Sexual Behavior in Neanderthals
- from Part III - Nonhuman Primate Sexual Behavior
- Edited by Todd K. Shackelford, Oakland University, Michigan
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Sexual Psychology
- Published online:
- 30 June 2022
- Print publication:
- 21 July 2022, pp 516-560
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Summary
Improved clarity of Neanderthal ways of life brought about by advancements in analysing the fossil and archaeological records, accompanied by increased willingness to accept complex Neanderthal cognition, makes it appropriate to begin to understand their sexual behavior. In this chapter, we briefly review current understandings about Neanderthals based on anatomy, genetics, and behavior evidenced from the archaeological record. We then integrate this with broad behavioral ecology and evolutionary sexual selection concepts to consider potential selection pressures on Neanderthals’ sexual and reproductive behaviors. Large adult brain size, rapid infant brain growth, and protracted offspring development, similar to Homo sapiens, were supported by adaptations in social organization, mating and parental effort. It is likely that male provisioning and investment in offspring strengthened reproductive pair bonds, improved infant survival, and impacted mate choice in both sexes. Systematic collaborative subsistence strategies were probably matched by a heavy reliance on kin and other trusted adults within the cooperative breeding group, reducing the energy burden on reproducing females, and enabling shorter lactation and reduced interbirth intervals. Neanderthals’ wide ecological tolerances and behavioral flexibility suggest that they also adjusted their sexual and reproductive behavior according to environmental circumstances. Small group size, local-to-regional social networks and potentially seasonal breeding enabled populations to adapt to fluctuating energy availability. During harsher climatic phases, limited access to mating opportunities may have favored social monogamy, with genetic isolation and inbreeding more likely. When conditions were milder (during interglacials, in warmer regions or seasons) with more plentiful resources, group sizes and social networks may have permitted polygyny. Finally we explore the behavioral implications of genetic evidence that Neanderthals interbred with other hominins including H. sapiens. This suggests that differences in physical appearance and social structures did not prevent copulation or raising hybrid infants, although sterility and lower fitness of the latter may have limited the spread of genes between species.
Contributors
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- By Michael H. Allen, Leora Amira, Victoria Arango, David W. Ayer, Helene Bach, Christopher R. Bailey, Ross J. Baldessarini, Kelsey Ball, Alan L. Berman, Marian E. Betz, Emily A. Biggs, R. Warwick Blood, Kathleen T. Brady, David A. Brent, Jeffrey A. Bridge, Gregory K. Brown, Anat Brunstein Klomek, A. Jacqueline Buchanan, Michelle J. Chandley, Tim Coffey, Jessica Coker, Yeates Conwell, Scott J. Crow, Collin L. Davidson, Yogesh Dwivedi, Stacey Espaillat, Jan Fawcett, Steven J. Garlow, Robert D. Gibbons, Catherine R. Glenn, Deborah Goebert, Erica Goldstein, Tina R. Goldstein, Madelyn S. Gould, Kelly L. Green, Alison M. Greene, Philip D. Harvey, Robert M. A. Hirschfeld, Donna Holland Barnes, Andres M. Kanner, Gary J. Kennedy, Stephen H. Koslow, Benoit Labonté, Alison M. Lake, William B. Lawson, Steve Leifman, Adam Lesser, Timothy W. Lineberry, Amanda L. McMillan, Herbert Y. Meltzer, Michael Craig Miller, Michael J. Miller, James A. Naifeh, Katharine J. Nelson, Charles B. Nemeroff, Alexander Neumeister, Matthew K. Nock, Jennifer H. Olson-Madden, Gregory A. Ordway, Michael W. Otto, Ghanshyam N. Pandey, Giampaolo Perna, Jane Pirkis, Kelly Posner, Anne Rohs, Pedro Ruiz, Molly Ryan, Alan F. Schatzberg, S. Charles Schulz, M. Katherine Shear, Morton M. Silverman, April R. Smith, Marcus Sokolowski, Barbara Stanley, Zachary N. Stowe, Sarah A. Struthers, Leonardo Tondo, Gustavo Turecki, Robert J. Ursano, Kimberly Van Orden, Anne C. Ward, Danuta Wasserman, Jerzy Wasserman, Melinda K. Westlund, Tracy K. Witte, Kseniya Yershova, Alexandra Zagoloff, Sidney Zisook
- Edited by Stephen H. Koslow, University of Miami, Pedro Ruiz, University of Miami, Charles B. Nemeroff, University of Miami
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- Book:
- A Concise Guide to Understanding Suicide
- Published online:
- 05 October 2014
- Print publication:
- 18 September 2014, pp vii-x
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Seasonal Variations in Peruvian Marine Reservoir Age from Pre-Bomb Argopecten Purpuratus Shell Carbonate
- Kevin B Jones, Gregory W L Hodgins, David L Dettman, C Fred T Andrus, April Nelson, Miguel F Etayo-Cadavid
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- Journal:
- Radiocarbon / Volume 49 / Issue 2 / 2007
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 18 July 2016, pp. 877-888
- Print publication:
- 2007
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- Article
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Marine upwelling along coastal Peru can be intense and variable, making radiocarbon dating marine and coastal systems complex. Historical and proxy records of upwelling along coastal Peru are few, and long-lived species such as corals do not grow in the cold coastal waters. Mollusk shell carbonate, however, can record both the magnitude of the local marine reservoir correction, ΔR, and of seasonal oscillations in the ventilation age of coastal waters. If large, these seasonal oscillations would complicate radiocarbon dating of marine organisms. To examine this possibility, we sampled for δ13C, δ18O, and 14C content a set of pre-bomb Argopecten purpuratus shells collected from coastal Peru during 1908 and 1926. Intrashell variations of up to 216 14C yr were noted, but these were not consistently correlated with seasonal changes in δ18O or δ13C. Only an 11 yr difference was observed in the weighted average ΔR of Callao Bay shells collected during normal (1908) and El Niño (1926) years. Despite the intrashell 14C variation noted, weighted average ΔR values from all 3 sample sites and from normal and El Niño years all overlap at 1 σ. We report ΔR values of 183 ± 18 and 194 ± 23 yr from Callao Bay (12°4′S), 165 ± 24 yr from Salaverry (8°14′S), and 189 ± 23 yr from Sechura Bay (5°45′S).
Looking Backward, Looking Forward: MLA Members Speak
- April Alliston, Elizabeth Ammons, Jean Arnold, Nina Baym, Sandra L. Beckett, Peter G. Beidler, Roger A. Berger, Sandra Bermann, J.J. Wilson, Troy Boone, Alison Booth, Wayne C. Booth, James Phelan, Marie Borroff, Ihab Hassan, Ulrich Weisstein, Zack Bowen, Jill Campbell, Dan Campion, Jay Caplan, Maurice Charney, Beverly Lyon Clark, Robert A. Colby, Thomas C. Coleman III, Nicole Cooley, Richard Dellamora, Morris Dickstein, Terrell Dixon, Emory Elliott, Caryl Emerson, Ann W. Engar, Lars Engle, Kai Hammermeister, N. N. Feltes, Mary Anne Ferguson, Annie Finch, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Jerry Aline Flieger, Norman Friedman, Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Sandra M. Gilbert, Laurie Grobman, George Guida, Liselotte Gumpel, R. K. Gupta, Florence Howe, Cathy L. Jrade, Richard A. Kaye, Calhoun Winton, Murray Krieger, Robert Langbaum, Richard A. Lanham, Marilee Lindemann, Paul Michael Lützeler, Thomas J. Lynn, Juliet Flower MacCannell, Michelle A. Massé, Irving Massey, Georges May, Christian W. Hallstein, Gita May, Lucy McDiarmid, Ellen Messer-Davidow, Koritha Mitchell, Robin Smiles, Kenyatta Albeny, George Monteiro, Joel Myerson, Alan Nadel, Ashton Nichols, Jeffrey Nishimura, Neal Oxenhandler, David Palumbo-Liu, Vincent P. Pecora, David Porter, Nancy Potter, Ronald C. Rosbottom, Elias L. Rivers, Gerhard F. Strasser, J. L. Styan, Marianna De Marco Torgovnick, Gary Totten, David van Leer, Asha Varadharajan, Orrin N. C. Wang, Sharon Willis, Louise E. Wright, Donald A. Yates, Takayuki Yokota-Murakami, Richard E. Zeikowitz, Angelika Bammer, Dale Bauer, Karl Beckson, Betsy A. Bowen, Stacey Donohue, Sheila Emerson, Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, Jay L. Halio, Karl Kroeber, Terence Hawkes, William B. Hunter, Mary Jambus, Willard F. King, Nancy K. Miller, Jody Norton, Ann Pellegrini, S. P. Rosenbaum, Lorie Roth, Robert Scholes, Joanne Shattock, Rosemary T. VanArsdel, Alfred Bendixen, Alarma Kathleen Brown, Michael J. Kiskis, Debra A. Castillo, Rey Chow, John F. Crossen, Robert F. Fleissner, Regenia Gagnier, Nicholas Howe, M. Thomas Inge, Frank Mehring, Hyungji Park, Jahan Ramazani, Kenneth M. Roemer, Deborah D. Rogers, A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff, Regina M. Schwartz, John T. Shawcross, Brenda R. Silver, Andrew von Hendy, Virginia Wright Wexman, Britta Zangen, A. Owen Aldridge, Paula R. Backscheider, Roland Bartel, E. M. Forster, Milton Birnbaum, Jonathan Bishop, Crystal Downing, Frank H. Ellis, Roberto Forns-Broggi, James R. Giles, Mary E. Giles, Susan Blair Green, Madelyn Gutwirth, Constance B. Hieatt, Titi Adepitan, Edgar C. Knowlton, Jr., Emanuel Mussman, Sally Todd Nelson, Robert O. Preyer, David Diego Rodriguez, Guy Stern, James Thorpe, Robert J. Wilson, Rebecca S. Beal, Joyce Simutis, Betsy Bowden, Sara Cooper, Wheeler Winston Dixon, Tarek el Ariss, Richard Jewell, John W. Kronik, Wendy Martin, Stuart Y. McDougal, Hugo Méndez-Ramírez, Ivy Schweitzer, Armand E. Singer, G. Thomas Tanselle, Tom Bishop, Mary Ann Caws, Marcel Gutwirth, Christophe Ippolito, Lawrence D. Kritzman, James Longenbach, Tim McCracken, Wolfe S. Molitor, Diane Quantic, Gregory Rabassa, Ellen M. Tsagaris, Anthony C. Yu, Betty Jean Craige, Wendell V. Harris, J. Hillis Miller, Jesse G. Swan, Helene Zimmer-Loew, Peter Berek, James Chandler, Hanna K. Charney, Philip Cohen, Judith Fetterley, Herbert Lindenberger, Julia Reinhard Lupton, Maximillian E. Novak, Richard Ohmann, Marjorie Perloff, Mark Reynolds, James Sledd, Harriet Turner, Marie Umeh, Flavia Aloya, Regina Barreca, Konrad Bieber, Ellis Hanson, William J. Hyde, Holly A. Laird, David Leverenz, Allen Michie, J. Wesley Miller, Marvin Rosenberg, Daniel R. Schwarz, Elizabeth Welt Trahan, Jean Fagan Yellin
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- Journal:
- PMLA / Publications of the Modern Language Association of America / Volume 115 / Issue 7 / December 2000
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 23 October 2020, pp. 1986-2078
- Print publication:
- December 2000
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