ABSTRACT
Editors' Summary: James Dow challenges the Divale and Harris (1976) assertion that the male supremacist complex of warfare, female infanticide and male dominance serves to regulate population with respect to resources--a fimctional explanation which is incompatible with Darwinian theory. He summarises the previous criticisms of divale and Harris' theory. He then makes predictions about what the demographic structures of populations should be if the male supremacist complex were operating as specified. An analysis of the demographic data demonstrates that in general they do not fit the predictions. Thus divale and Harris' theory must be rejected on empirical as well as theoretical grounds.
