ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on the Ache and detailed descriptions of the study population, sampling scheme, data collection methods, and analytical methods employed. It presents tests of models drawn from life history theory and human evolutionary ecology. The book provides a theoretical overview of evolutionary ecology as applied to humans, and life history theory. It deals with an assessment of the relationship between life history theory and human demography. Life history traits consist of age-specific schedules of mortality and fecundity, and the traits that are directly the result of these schedules or are in some direct way connected to them. The first trade-off in life history theory, that between current and future reproduction, leads to an interesting set of biological problems that are in many ways analogous to discounting in the economics of interest rate theory.
