The “obstetrical dilemma” was born, so to speak, in 1960, not in a medical journal, but in the pages of Scientific American magazine. There, anthropologist Sherwood Washburn proposed that the ease with which most non-human primates give birth when compared to humans comes down to bipedalism. While a mother-to-be great ape will seek seclusion to […]
Anthropology
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Our Worst Mistake, Part 2
Last week, we looked at anthropologist Jared Diamond’s claim that the Neolithic Revolution, when most hunter-gatherers settled down to become farmers, was “the worst mistake in the history of the human race.” Since Diamond popularized this “revisionist” thesis, sociologists and anthropologists have seized on it to explain everything from the subjugation of women (not generally […]