We have examined humanity as a whole. Yet it is quite clear that over the course of history, humans have lived in different groups that have evolved different languages, cultures, and physical traits. What does genetics tell us about how individuals relate to a group and how different groups relate to one another? We begin discussion by considering orangutans and [...]
One of the clearest examples of psychological influences on population structure is the phenomenon of mate preference. Mate preference occurs when members of one sex prefer to mate with individuals who have certain phenotypes. Evolution occurs when these preferences result in actual differences in fitness—the preferred phenotype does, in fact, leave more gene copies than the less preferred phenotypes. One [...]
Five different forces have influenced human evolution- natural selection, random genetic drift, mutation, population mating structure, and culture. All evolutionary biologists agree on the first three of these forces, although there have been disputes at times about the relative importance of each force. The fourth and fifth forces are new in the sense that they are not explicated in more [...]
