ABSTRACT

The application of evolutionary theory to behavior hit a stumbling block that was not decisively overcome until more than a century after Charles Darwin published his thesis. In the early 1960s, a group of researchers trained largely at Columbia University developed a new, ecologically focused approach to human behavior and culture by combining elements of older anthropological theories with elements, like Wynne-Edwards’ theory of group selection, borrowed from ecology, evolutionary biology, and animal-behavior studies. Much of the work during the past twenty years or so on the evolutionary biology of human behavior has focused on reproduction, and much of that has been on the details of human mating patterns. W. D. Hamilton’s idea has been one of the most important in the development of the new evolutionary biological approach to behavior.