The Yanamamo and Nap Chagnon with Ray Hames
2026-05-05 12:00:00.000 +00:00

Uh David, today is a very special day because it's Tuesday. And every Tuesday, what happens? Well, uh the latest episode of Evolutionary Psychology, the podcast comes out. And what is the tagline of the tagline is it's actual evolutionary psychology by Actual Evolutionary Psychologists. And you know, it's been uh really nice to hear from people saying that they're actual evolutionary psychologists and actually uh enjoying it, and they're confirming that it is kind of actually what we do. Yep. So here you go. Enjoy this next one. Happy Tuesday. David, I am always excited about our guests, but I'm especially excited about guests that uh we don't usually get to talk to in our day-to-day um sort of scientific um

existence. And for me today, uh Ray Hames is one of those folks where um I had actually not really spent much time interacting with him previously, and um we got to talk to him about all kinds of stuff, including sort of early history of evolutionary behavioral sciences, and specifically working um in part with uh Nap Shagnon. That's right, with with the Yanomamo, which is a really fascinating group of people. He has some really uh uh incredible stories to tell about his experiences with the Yano Mamo. Uh this guy is a true veteran. Uh he was there right when the evolutionary behavioral sciences were becoming a thing. And uh this guy knows the development of this field. He has uh stories to tell and knowledge to share about how these fields developed and and

you know whether they may have uh developed in the wrong way or the right way. Uh I think he has a few barbs about E.O. Wilson and about how maybe he oversimplified things. E. O. Wilson, for those of you who don't know, uh kicked off the evolutionary behavioral sciences with his book Sociobiology, uh, and that was later developed into evolutionary psychology by uh Leda Cosmodies and John Tubi. Uh but we get into all that history. Uh uh Ray was there from the very beginning, um, and uh he's just a a really um uh wonderful guy, brilliant mind, and uh we we learned so much from this conversation. Yeah, and we also had in the spirit of sort of the evolutionary social sciences as a community, we actually had a guest, uh um co-host, which who was uh Zach Garfield.

So it's actually gonna be Ray and Zach and David and myself. So we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna I think start doing that um sometimes, especially having a returning guest kind of come on and and be with us um to talk to somebody new and you know, just different sort of different format. And it was wonderful to have Zach on because he had also unique uh experiences with Ray that we couldn't, David and I, um, sort of convey to folks. So I I really enjoyed that. Um one other note is that we did have some technical difficulty with um with Wi-Fi um uh in this episode. And so you might detect some some editing in the earlier uh stages um that you know so just just be aware of that. So thanks for bearing with that.

Yes. All right. Without further ado, enjoy Ray Haynes. All right, so we are recording, and today we have uh a very special and unique uh set of guests. So by my math, we have one more person than we usually do. We usually have, well, actually, we usually have two or three people, but today we have four people. So we have uh returning guest, uh Zach Garfield, who is I would say our first guest co-host of the podcast. Um, but really why we're here is to talk to uh Ray Haymes. Um and Ray Hames, um, in addition to uh receiving the uh the HBES uh Lifetime Career Award has a number of um accolades and um awards and things, but I think we're gonna let Zach um sort of introduce who Ray is. Sure. Um thank you Dave and David for the chance to be a part of this conversation with Ray.

Um so Ray Haymes uh is a professor emeritus at the University of Nebraska Lincoln um on his retirement uh tour now I suppose we could say And um I yeah, I first met Ray as I was an undergraduate at UNL. And I worked with Ray. He was my first introduction to anthropology and the evolutionary social sciences. Um, Ray's done pioneering work, uh, really sort of the first wave of human behavioral ecology and when evolutionary theory started to be sort of co-opted by cultural anthropologists, testing ideas uh that had come from math models and from biology among human populations. and he's done a lot of work on cooperation, food sharing, uh, the division of labor, decision making in households. Uh, also a wide sort of has his hands in a lot of other pots too, related to

sexuality and marriage systems. And so he's he's kind of been around for the the emergence of our field. Um, he's invested a lot in methods too. So he's a methodological expert, especially regarding time allocation data collection and all the sort of tools that human behavioral ecologists were using, taking these models from biology and ethology and trying to apply them in rural subsistence-based communities. His accolades are extensive. He's trained many students. I'm one of them. Um he's recently uh member of the National Academy of Sciences as well. I think only the second uh faculty from UNL to join that's um that group. So um, you know, it was really an honor getting to work with Ray as an undergraduate, and

he's continued to shepherd me along through my my training um and infected me with all many of his biases um along the way, which has been uh very useful. And it's yeah, it's an honor to have you here and to chat with you um on this podcast, Ray. Well, thank you for the nice uh introduction and I'm very happy to uh to to join uh Dave and David uh in this uh podcast. Uh I c listened to a few, one I think recently with uh with Ed Hagan. So here I am. Uh happy to be here. Uh I mean one one question to start and and uh Zach also uh feel free to jump in but but Ray one question is sort of um you know, as Zach mentioned, the you are sort of involved in sort of the first wave of applying these uh mathematical models from

evolutionary biology at a time when doing so was just sort of unheard of or controversial. Um and I'm just sort of curious, sort of, what your experience was in sort of finding yourself in that situation. Uh yeah, I was among the first wave. Uh I I think uh, you know, um the shagdown was the you know true uh first wave along with don simons uh and people like david bus and then a little bit later uh tube and cosmeties uh you know came online i remember when i uh published a a paper on garden labor exchange um i got a a reviewer who said you know you've got to read who in the heck are these people uh but i looked up their work and found it to be uh very, very interesting, a bit rough, uh, because

uh we were branded as um uh uh racist uh and um kind of spensarian uh conservatives. Uh and a lot of the problem stemmed from um, I think, if I may, uh Ed Wilson's work uh in terms of he said some really silly things, uh I should say inaccurate things. Uh what are some of those uh silly things? Or what are some examples of those silly things that he said? He said that you know all hunter gatherers were territorial. When in fact territoriality is a contingent response and resource density is high and predictability is high, then you would predict based on economic models, largely Jerem Brown's models of bird territoriality. And so you have a kind of range from home range systems to territorial systems.

And so he was kind of like I would call him uh an old school ethologist who kind of approached human behavior from a very simple-minded sort of uh genetic determinism. Uh but still he's he's really important in in in our field. He just kind of like that got the stuff on hunter gatherers uh really, really wrong. Sort of like bringing in so the the ethology is this you know famous school of evolutionary biology that studied fixed action patterns or sort of innate reflexive behaviors like uh the probably the most commonly known one is imprinting. So a duckling will imprint on the the first thing it sees and sort of treat that thing as its parent. And so there are these famous photos of Conrad Lorenz with like a trail of ducklings

following him along. And so you and what you seem to be saying is that he took this way of thinking, which may have worked out reasonably well in the case of ducklings, and applied it to humans, which led to some oversimplifications. Is that basically what you're saying? Yeah, uh indeed. And uh essentially he seemed to not be aware of the developments in behavioral ecology, in particular, of things like uh simple things like optimal foraging theory that demonstrated the contingency of uh of game selection, uh diet breath models, uh search patterns, etc., etc. Uh, which you know uh makes perfect sense uh because if we were stuck with fixed action patterns, we would be poorly adapted to to to the world.

Yeah, yeah. Do you so how much of the the animosity do you think arose from Eo Wilson bungling things and oversimplifying things versus the mere fact of applying an evolutionary lens to human behavior? I think both are really critical. In fact, you know, when Evolution of Human Behavior had a previous name, and that was ethology and sociobiology. And I forget the date, but I think it was about 1980, early 80s, we had a meeting, I think it was at Michigan maybe, where uh Ed was a president, and we voted to change the name to Evolution and Human Behavior because there was this immediate association with the journal the term sociobiology, which was Ed's term, which meant that if you use that term to characterize yourself, you kind of were in

his um mode of thinking. And so uh that was you know a kind of really important break that uh that that did occur. However, you know, uh still some of my old friends like Sarah Hurdy still use the term sociobiology to characterize uh herself, uh, but it's kind of a historical uh legacy. So there were uh I'm I'm trying to recall what the question was, you had a two part yeah it was just about whether um the uh applying evolution in general to have to do with the other What does evolution have to do with it? We're freed from that kind of constraint. And so that that mindset um was worked against us. One of the cartoonish like sort of narratives that at least I still hold a little bit is that um you know behavioral ecology was sort of not psychological enough, and that's

why evolutionary psychology was necessary to really uh flesh out the evolved psychology and and actually talk about like what's the approximate system doing. But, you know, as I read a lot of the history of even ethology, but also human behavioral ecology, there's actually quite a bit of complex psychology in it. And so do you think it's sort of an inaccurate thing to say that human behavioral ecology wasn't psychological? Is that sort of an oversimplification? And was human behavioral ecology already doing evolutionary psychology, sort of? Um well it it it uh is an oversimplification, but it's actually pretty accurate. And uh, you know, what we do is essentially what Graven calls the the phenotypic gambit.

Right. And we'll leave the neuromechanisms to you guys because you're really good at that. But our focus is on behavior. And behavior does have consequences, and there's got to be a payoff for particular kinds of behavior. And so this is something that um Don Simons uh brought in. Uh I think sometimes rather stridily, uh, but you know, of him. Uh and then of course John Alita you know brought that to the uh to the end that we're interested in looking at the uh real life consequences of behavior, because if a behavior is adaptive, we've got to show the payoff. Uh and it's clear that the psychological mechanisms are really important. And again, I would would view it as a division of labor. Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

How it felt like at that moment in time. I think like all of us would kind of agree that the evolutionary social sciences is this sort of know, paradigm shift. And at least that's our hope. And maybe the the future of fruits are still yet to be born, but we think that it's like a really big deal. I think most of the people in this field are quite passionate about it. They see it as like quite a big departure from, let's say, previous less or non-evolutionary models. But at that time, when this was first getting going, did it feel like it had the chance to be maybe what it would be perceived to be by like the the 90s and let's say now or was it just like I don't know let's try this new thing or did does that is my question clear did

it did it seem like there was a a big sea change ahead or was it just like uh I don't know trying something weird and out of the box at the time? Well I think I can only speak for myself but uh if if m my idea was that if evolution is accurate, it ought to apply to us. And so the question becomes: how does it apply to us? And that was the thing that kind of drove me because we could look at all the sorts of physiological, morphological changes that occurred in the process of hominid evolution, clearly guided by evolution. But then when it came to the brain, somehow, you know, evolution didn't penetrate there. Somehow we became cultured and were like free of the bounds of evolutionary forces. And so I rejected, and I think a lot of us rejected that sort of uh

process. The other thing that really was important is that we finally had a good hypothetical to deductive method to test our ideas. The only field at that time that really had that approach was economics. And were they, you know, rational choice, sort of, and so we have they had a real theory, although they there's some problems with that theory. And so a lot of us, you know, we're just like, wow, we've got this method where we can actually develop hypotheses and test them. And they may be wrong, but at least you you have that kind of security that as opposed to uh maybe I overgeneralize these ad hoc make sense to me stuff in psychology and sociology kind of models, we're getting us nowhere.

Yeah. It's the same thing. It is an overgeneralization, but it's also accurate. It's the same answer you gave me a few minutes ago. Yes, exactly. And just for people listening, you know, those hypo hypothetic or deductive theories are essentially, you know, selection pressure dynamic models, right? So like things like optimal foraging or you know, ideal free distribution, or um things where you're sort of creating a model of saying, look, if there was a phenotypic design for dealing with a certain problem, what are the costs and benefits that that design would have to deal with and how would it respond or optimize those? And you can look at that for dealing with collecting food for conflict things like the

asymmetric war of attrition. Um, you know, are those the kinds of models that you're talking about, these sort of um evolutionary game theory models? Yeah, I I think, you know, a a lot of us and and and I'll include uh my my compatriots at the time, uh Kim Hill, Bruce Winterholder, Eric Smith, Kristen Hawkes. Uh, we were, you know, uh essentially economic anthropologists. And so we knew about you know rational choice theory. Um, and then we read the literature on optimal foraging theory, uh, and we could see the mesh between the two, and we could see the direct application in terms of food getting activities for the kinds of research we did. And a lot of us worked in South America among you know barely acculturated uh

groups and uh on hunter-gatherers and uh so that was something that you know immediately pulled us in. But and also we were um another kind of dimension that united us all we were we were quantitative in our approach. We want to know about return to effort uh and how that affected uh uh choices in terms of what people uh pursued. And so uh when we started uh reading um uh uh behavioral ecology it was a wonderful kind of uh uh guide for us. So if I'm hearing this right, it was sort of you were inspired by economics thinking about humans from this economic perspective, and then came across behavioral ecology as well and sort of integrated the two. But anyway, another element was kind of really interesting, group selection approach, which

was very comforting to a lot of uh anthropologists. Uh and uh so uh that was uh and the whole issue of Wynn Edwards and population regulation and people doing things uh for the good of their group and ridiculous arguments. Uh please kill your kids because we don't want uh our population to overshoot the um uh resources. Uh uh in a population of, you know, 50 people in a village, okay, you gotta start killing your kids because we're worried about long-term uh ecological damage because we gotta maintain a stead. You know, it was like laughable on the face of it when you're really I shouldn't be so sarcastic, I suppose. Uh but at the same time, it it it just was like bewildering. What parent would ever behave in that way?

In fact, the argument would be uh uh you kill your kids and leave mine alone. Right, right. Yeah. Um Ray, you mentioned, you know, that you guys, you and your compatriots brought this quantitative approach in anthropology. But many of you were trained as like cultural anthropologists, maybe in your undergrad or earlier in your graduate training. So I kind of wonder like how it went in the field for you at that time, Because quantitative anthropologists always face this trade-off because we we need that qualitative ethnographic insight to know what questions to ask, know how to interpret our results. But at the same time, you know, collecting time allocation data is super intensive. So you kind of can't do both, but at the same time, you kind of have to do both.

So I wonder how that went for you, like adopting a quantitative approach, but also trying to get this deep ethnographic insights. Um, you know, I I know you consider yourself an ethnographer as well. And then also, you know, which communities were you mostly working with? I didn't mention that in your in your introduction, but how did you balance that? Getting the ethnographic qualitative perspective while also collecting this rich quantitative data? Well, uh to do both because you know, we had uh a legacy of, you know, I'm uh Shagna was one of my mentors. Elma Service was another one of my my mentors. And both all of those people had done kind of good qualitative research. So it was kind of an expectation that we would balance the two.

And you know, for example, if you look at, you know, speaking of Shagnan, um uh he was working with James Neal, and he really got into extensive demographic uh research, but added kinship to that dimension that I think um Neil wasn't too interested in. And then he was trained as to some extent as a you know a Michigan cultural evolutionist uh who believed in uh looking at the um uh humanistic and qualitative dimensions of of human behavior Have I answered your question? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. So, what were the communities that you worked with? And did you, you know, did you work with translators in the field or did you develop language proficiency at the outsets? Well, uh a good question.

Um, you're really full language capabilities, uh, because you you know you're in a village and you can't talk, don't know your language, and you don't know their language. And so the motivation is really powerful just to have some like normal human intercourse on a daily basis, whether it's hi, how you doing, you know, good morning, sort of stuff like that. And so uh you really are uh highly motivated uh to learn the language. And fortunately, Yanamamo was, I would say, uh it won't sound arrogant, but it was a pretty easy language to learn. Yaquana, another group I worked with, was really tough because the phonemic system, you know, for example, all the valves could be glottalized. And that takes a lot of practice to get your chops down speaking that way.

And so actually, uh, when I did uh my research on the Yanamamo, I uh I used Gianamamo. And when I did my research on the Yaquana, I used Yanomamo because the Yaquana could understand um Yanomamo because of the trading relationships and intermarriages and some kind of village coalescences. And then also, you know, through a little Spanish for some of the yaquana who uh could uh mainly the men who could understand uh Spanish. And so um yeah learning the language is is uh is really critical. Yeah. And what what was that uh working with in the Yanamamo? I mean, you know, that was a very kind of famous and slightly infamous field site, um, especially with sort of the um the darkness in El Dorado controversy, which you know, you

and Tubi and other people, you know, really vindicated and you know, showed that there was really nothing to that, or to the extent there was something to it on the on the other folks' end. But um like what was it like going to Yanamamo land? Uh and you know with with or without Nap Shagnan on what was that like? Oh what can I say? It was scary, not because of the Yanamamo per se, but I remember um I was with the team, uh we were all in a set of big canoes. I was the first one dropped off at the end of the Orinoco. We're easy um uh uh travel is is possible from that point forward. I'm we're talking about maybe oh uh 50 miles from the headwaters where I was dropped off. And I remember walking up the slope after I unpacked all my stuff and looking at

Knapp and uh Bob Carnero and and a couple other people um uh leaving me and I thought as I walked up that slope, you know, okay, here it begins. Uh I had no canoe to uh get back to the to the missions. Uh I had no uh communication system uh in that uh uh uh what do you call that uh kind of communication uh well i i had no radio essentially to to call if i needed help and but you know i was young male uh and ready for for adventure and probably uh clearly overestimated uh my ability to to handle problems uh i did have a medical kit uh but i figured you know if i broke a leg i would be in bad shape uh and uh you know i in in kind of modern fieldwork, uh, you have good radio communication and you know where you

can get help. And you've already pre-planned, you know, if something should go wrong. Uh, and then at the ultimate, you know, you can get extraction uh insurance, such that if you're in a really difficult to get to, uh, you know, uh, but you know, so back then, no satellite communications. And everything was, you know, by foot or by by river. But you know, after a while, you know, you're there for purpose. The Anomamo treated me really, really well. They're very kind to me. They could get real demanding, but then, you know, you could get, you know, right back in their face. But so I was really fortunate that they they treated me, you know, quite well. They the only thing that really bothered me later in the field was when it's not uncommon

for the Anamamo to threaten you with mortal harm if you didn't give them something. Uh, and then you know, so there's this old guy, you know, he's kind of threatening you, and you know he've k he's killed six people, So he's perfectly capable of dispatching you. But you know, that would be the wrong thing to do because I was the source of axes and machetes and fish hooks and fish line, et cetera, et cetera. And they didn't want to kill the, you know, or he didn't want to response for killing the golden goose. But you know, people can get really mad and not think things through. Uh, and so uh, but anyway, uh the anima were very nice to me. Aside from the death threats. Yeah, but see that's just kind of like uh banter.

Teasing. Is it kind of like was it is quasi-humorous? Well it was to push you to see how you would respond. It was testing it. So it's a kind of a game. Yeah. Uh and um you would just respond either silently or I don't think so. Uh you're a little guy and I could take you out right now, barehanded. You know, you just kind of give it back to them. Uh, but in a kind of like not overextended way. Uh and you want to, you know, kind of like uh uh get out of that back and forth as quickly as possible. Maybe could you tell us just like what a typical day looked like collecting data in a Yanamoma village in this time? And I mean I I imagine there's overlap with how what fieldwork is like today or in different places, but maybe there's some I don't know unique components.

Like what was just like a typical, you know, you wake up in the morning until you go to bed on average. Well, wake up in the morning, have some coffee. Day starts when the sun gets up. Everyone is is is is uh is up, and day ends when the sun pretty much goes down. Although people will you know chat around the fires, uh eat a little bit, uh shamans will chant, uh babies will cry. Uh but by about I would say nine o'clock, everyone is sawing logs and comfortable in their in their hammocks. But uh getting up in the morning, uh it depends. You know, sometimes uh a real quick lunch because I have a hunting trip to go on with a bunch of people I'm gonna track and collect data doing that. And so might be gone for until until noon.

Uh or maybe there was a gathering trip. And so I go out with uh some women and a couple of men, And we would go to a spot and and I would record gathering food, food collection uh activities, foraging activities. And then, you know, when I first got there, uh early in the morning, you know, I would uh be talking with a couple of young guys I hired to learn the language, to practice the language, and to, you know, really, I can't stress how much, you know, the the social isolation is is getting over that, getting through that is uh just to make yourself feel part of a group uh is is really important. So learning the language. And in fact, the thing is what I found interesting when I would go to Caracas to get

resupplied, I felt really lonely because there was nobody there who gave a shit about me. You know, uh, I was just some, you know, faceless name. I felt psychologically much more comfortable back in the village where I had friends who actually, some of them, you know, cared about me. Others wanted to keep me around for the resources that I had, etc., etc. Um so uh, you know, early on to answer your question, uh couple hours in the morning learning the language. And then the nice thing about behavior observations is that you can, you know, essentially do it with limited uh uh competence. Uh and you know if someone wasn't there, then I would ask, you know, where's so-and-so? I was able to ask that.

What were they doing? Who were they with, et cetera, et cetera. So you have not direct observations, you have reports of what people were doing. And so um the first part of my research was learning the language and then making rounds throughout the day and then uh see what everyone was doing. And then you know you have special topics, you know, uh who was married to whom, uh trying to get some good demographic kinship information uh and and things of that nature. Yeah. Some of your early work, or I mean, maybe not early, but just sort of you had things on like time allocation. And especially nowadays, it's so easy to just sort of push an electronic button. Um, you know, at that time, was it recording things on paper and pencil?

Or you know, how are you recording time allocation things? You ever hear of a Fortran coding sheet? Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's what I I used, uh, you know, and uh so uh all that's you know, it's it's it's essentially a spreadsheet. Uh but but uh that was what I brought into the field. And then of course uh I had no computer at the time. Later on, we were some of the, I think maybe first anthropologists to use computers in remote areas. But yeah, everything was pencil and paper, pencil and paper, and then carbon paper because you know you want to have backups, uh, because you know, nothing could be more horrible than to uh be in the field for six months and lose your data or have the data somehow wrecked.

And it means that's that's six months of your life, you know, just kind of like down the drain. And so you get really uh careful uh and always have this kind of shadow of paranoia uh you know what if what if you know something would uh would go on yeah and i don't think that uh area is particularly favorable to like pres preserving paper like i think people have talked about how their clothes rot you know like let alone paper nice sheets of paper uh that's not very friendly for paper you're right in fact uh Shagnell wrote a book called Studying the Yamamo, where he made a bunch of recommendations for people uh working in uh remote areas. And he was criticized for saying things like, you know, don't use red uh red ink on your

pens. Well, it's goddamn right because it smears, it runs. And so he had a bunch of great tips for you know recording data, safeguarding data. He also had some really bad advice about what kind of shoes to uh to use. He he was in favor of Chuck Taylor of All-Stars, uh, which are terrible. Uh they had no heel cups, uh, they had no art supports, uh, you know, they the rocks will go right through you and there's not no waterproofing anywhere. Yeah. But but you know, he he uh and also that the thing is that uh uh you don't want a whole cotton uh anything. You want a polyester cotton blend. Uh but I've had ants, you know, eat through socks, wool socks for some reason. Some ants love wool socks. Uh or or socks that have a mole.

So yeah, there there are lots of sort of practical things that uh uh are uh are really important. Yeah. What was um Napoleon Shagnon like uh as a sort of person in the field to be with and an advisor? Like what was that like? Uh well uh when I was first in the field, my first you know, probably 18 months divided in a bunch of segments, we didn't work much at all together. You know, I had my site initially with the Yanemama, later with the Yakwana. He would visit periodically to see how things were going on with the other two researchers, Ken Good and Eric Fredlin. And then later in the early 80s, we got an NSF grant together and we worked together. uh slept next to that man more than any other person except his wife.

Uh and um uh so we were probably, oh I would say probably about 11 months over three different periods, you know, working together. Uh one thing is that the Alamamo adored him. They thought he was, you know, someone who could speak their language, act like a Yanomamo in terms of having the Yanamamo are very lively people. They like to joke. They're very spontaneous. in in terms of the personality, but Nap really had a knack. They had a personality that he kind of had uh to some extent. And so uh they just thought he was uh you know totally cool, uh, glad to have him. He had a reputation for being very generous, He had a reputation for speaking the language really well. And there's a certain kind of, you know, bravado you

have to use when you're kind of like having that stature. And he was really, really good at it. So we uh we had a few fights in the field uh because I wanted to do A and he wanted to do B, or he thought I was too pushy here and I thought he was, you know, normal sorts of things, uh, but nothing that permanently, just for a couple days, you know, had us at odds with uh with one another. But it's you know kind of normal things where you're trying to coordinate each one's priorities and and different field work styles etc. Yeah yeah I think anybody would recognize that yeah for sure I mean what one uh some people just sort of described him as like sort of larger than life do you think that's accurate or was that sort of a glossing for people who didn't know him so well

uh oh yeah definitely larger than life uh yeah that uh is uh true in a lot of uh a lot of areas uh especially with uh a few beers in him and uh things of that nature. But uh and also he was uh whenever I would visit him or he'd visit me, it's like it was playtime. Let's go uh shoot some skeet, uh let's go play golf, uh let's play some tennis. Uh he, you know, let's go fish it. Um uh I hear there's some good pheasant hunting around here, you know. So he was a very kind of like uh an active person, a playful person who liked, you know, uh to do physical things. And so yeah, larger than life, uh he uh well I'll stop there. Sure. Well one thing I wanted to ask about is sort of you've studied like time allocation, also

hunting, you know, and you have this thing of like gamekeepers. And um I was sort of reflecting on, you know, uh we're all people with our own particular experiences. You know, I had a sort of weird upbringing where I grew up sort of like duck hunting and trapping in upstate New York and I sort of feel affinity to doing that. And I think that's sort of unusual, at least among experimental psychologists, you know, or the people I'm with. And I wonder, sort of, if like, you know, things like hunting or just subsistence things, you know, I think it's nice to talk to anthro folks, especially among us psychologists, because you, you know, you study that. But I do wonder if sort of like the culture of, you know not doing that sort of blinds us

to, for example, like the importance of the psychology of hunting. I don't really know much work on that in evolutionary psychology. I know Clark has a little bit on it, you have a some work on it, but like among us psychologists, we're not really doing very much on that. Yeah. Uh I didn't well, you know, Nap uh essentially sometimes uh brought food into his family through hunting because they weren't very uh well off. And uh so and he was an extra excellent shot with a shotgun. He would be in competitions where you'd hit 99 out of 100 targets, you know, different gauges. And so he was really skilled, uh well, I would say a skilled outdoorsman. Yeah, I kind of grew up in that similar environment, and given where I lived.

And so that helped a lot in terms of me studying hunting. But there were kind of certain limitations in that I had a 16-gauge shotgun I brought into the field. And a lot of it was for, you know, you get tired of canon tuna. uh uh, or someone gives you a piece of eight-day old tape here that is like turning yellow. Uh, you know, you want fresh food. Uh, and so uh, and then also uh just a bit of an aside, uh as a male, you were expected to be armed. And I remember one time I was going to go leave the village and I was going to trail a group of women who were going to go to a fishing spot. And I heard this shout out from two people, why are you leaving naked? And I'm looking, I've got more clothes on than the entire village has in their possession.

What are you talking about? Well, it's another metaphor for why are you unarmed? And so the idea was that uh I should be unarmed, I should be armed because I'm with a group of women who could be abducted, and I'm their only uh defender. Uh and so uh, you know, carrying a weapon is just part of who you become uh if you're working with the uh with the anomamo. One thing that really impressed me about hunting, and you read about these, you know, great white hunters who go to Africa on safari and they have you know anything from a gun bear to a guide, etc. etc. I could have my shotgun and probably only hunt about, you know, one tenth of the efficiency that the Yanomamal have with their bows and arrows because

where the game is likely to be, how to approach it, where does it go when it's wounded? How do you chase it if they you discover, you know, all these sorts of things, you know, demand a tremendous amount of time and skill. The thing, and I got fairly good, but the thing I could never uh be good at was going after monkeys because they're up there and you're running after them. And how the animal don't fall over and get tripped was always beyond me because I would never, I learned never to look up. I looked at brown butts in front of me uh because i had to you know watch where i was going because it was so so hard to to run through the jungle uh you know it's kind of i think there's a credence clearwater song about that but anyway uh

it's it's really difficult yeah yes what one of the many stories uh uh and for learning that that's things that like just kids are doing running through the jungle uh during the day uh and they're just doing that all their life. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I really learned about you know the the skill of hunting and how long it takes to uh uh develop. I remember one time I had this book on birds of South America and this old guy had a grandson with him and he's going through this book and he knew so many of the birds and he was telling his grandson about the sounds they make, where they're found, uh, and all this sorts of you know really rich uh what we call traditional ecological knowledge that was being transmitted to this kid through this book uh that I

that I had. Yeah, yeah. It's amazing. Yeah. Um and what uh for for sort of moving back a little bit towards the science thing, um What was, you know, when you're in the field and then going back to sort of scientific conferences, what was it like at that point when you were, you know, where you were presenting your data? Were people sort of saying, well, what are you doing? Or was it, were you just presenting at the uh Human Behavior and Evolution Society? Like, did you feel like you had a scientific home among people? Or were you sort of feeling like uh you didn't have anywhere to to present this work. Well, uh initially the the the uh the work uh that I presented on on hunting, you know, was pretty straightforward uh and uh presented at the

American Anthropological Association meetings. Uh but there was a change going on uh as I was uh early in my career where you know science and science is science was was less appreciated. Uh and it became a point where science became the enemy of any good uh researcher. Uh and so initially um no problem uh presenting papers, but then of course I got interested in the Evolution Behavior Uh Society. Uh and it was a better home for some of the things that I wanted to do because people are a lot more interested in it. Uh one thing that was uh disheartening about the American Anthropological Association was that uh you go to a meeting, there are literally hundreds of sessions, there are 10,000 anthropologists there, uh, and you're looking through the uh program

guide, and you can't find anything that you really want to listen to. It's like the uh Bruce Springsteen song 57 Channels and Nothing On. It's like, why am I going to this meeting if I'm gonna only go to two or three sessions? So later on, uh the Evolutionary Anthology Society was developed and and I started participating in that. That was better. But to go to a national meeting and only want to go to six sessions, maybe, uh, you know, good cost benefit proposition. So I I tried to, you know, I was became the president for a couple years, uh, and uh I just kind of like gave up on going. So I haven't been to an anthropology meeting since about maybe 2015 or something like that. And again, it was like, you know, uh nothing to listen to, and then

kind of like a basic hostility to one science, uh and then two especially evolutionary science and so uh it wasn't a good place to network and to make connections to be effectively criticized in terms of you know your approach you know you know why don't you look at it this way as opposed to a condemnation you know what the hell are you um doing practicing science etc Right. So it was just such a broad, you know, it wasn't even helpful criticism. It was just sort of like just leave as opposed to like, you know, do something, do analyze the data a different way. Or have you thought about this question? Yeah. Yeah. So uh uh the uh evolution of human behavior meetings were, you know, much uh more

more useful because you could get good feedback. And you know, the evolutionary psych. I remember one time gave a paper at at uh at Michigan. Uh, I think Monique Berghoff Mulder invited me. And then after the meeting, talking to Randy Nessie, they keeps asking me all these psychological questions. And I said, I said, if I were a psychologist, I would be, you know, trying to work on those questions. But you know, the real problem that I think a lot of evolutionary psychology psychologists don't realize is that trying to do what some of you do in terms of getting a bunch of you know students or or what a sample to answer a questionnaire is it just can't be done for a lot of populations because I remember I had uh

someone from Creighton University who was a psychologist wanted me to translate a set of questions he had that he thought uh because he got some money we could investigate among the Yanamawa. And I had to tell him, I can't do the translation. It just makes no sense. And so a lot of what uh uh psychologists do is depends on a kind of set of assumptions about uh culture and psychology, you know, about like, do you feel depressed? Well that's a hard word to translate to the Yanamamo. You know, are you horny? That's easy to translate with the with the Yanamamo or the Aquana. So there are a lot of, you know, and then the idea of a lighter scale, you know, that's another kind of like, what the hell are you asking me, uh, anthropologist?

You know, it it it's just so difficult. Um this is not to say it can't be done, uh, and I think it should be done. Uh, but um I think maybe Zach can help me. You know the research done by Stubbard Hox on the Hazza, where he did the translation and how it just didn't work out at all in terms of could you recall that that that paper I was yeah they're looking at if so a lot of times research might be done in uh a third language or a common language, like let's say you can use Spanish and among let's say you're working with some Yaquana or for example, or you can use Swahili, um, but it's the participant's second language. And as it turns out, that sort of intermediary language can be a big have a big influence

on the ways per people respond. And I mean that makes sense for everyone who speaks a second language, even if you're fluent in that language, it kind of patterns your your thinking in a way or your behavior. And so that's yeah, language is really a even if you can translate the concepts, the the language through which you translate them has like a a filtering effect or adds some noise. Right. And I I would uh uh maybe you could post that paper uh somewhere uh uh on this podcast. Uh but uh it's it's a really important paper. And it also, you know, when we talk about things we might ask people, there's a tremendous amount of cultural conditioning. So people thoroughly understand what you're talking about.

But to try and figure out how to translate it to another culture is just enormously difficult. Yeah, Yeah. And I think that's one of the values, right, of us talking to anthropologists. And I think like also developmental psychologists deal with this too, right? Is you can't rely on this sort of the water that all the fish are swimming in, just the the collection of common sense assumptions. And to really see that. I mean, I, you know, I love talking to Zach and all of all of you anthropologists, just because it does keep us honest in terms of our assumptions. Yeah. Well, now I just want to do a research project on horniness. Well, uh, I know all the words in Yatomal that relate to you know this also is an interesting point that as an anthropologist, you have to have your

rapport with the community, right? And then you have to kind of be strategic about certain questions you asked because it's it can potentially kind of burn your your social capital with your community. so there might be some topic that could be very interesting to ask scientifically, some questions, but like, God, do I want to actually ask that question to people who are, you know, in my social world in this community? Like they think you're already weird enough. You know, you can't come in asking about certain there's just certain things, not that it's culturally taboo, but it's just gonna make you seem even weirder and like a like a psycho than you already are. Yeah, I I I've I've that's a great point.

Uh because you know you're you're you're with an intimate group and could you imagine let's uh say you have a group of people you hang out with and you start asking them about their sexual behavior, they're gonna be going like, you know, what the hell is he trying to you know pourn in on what I've, you know, blah blah blah, et cetera. So yeah, you're you're absolutely right. Um, Ray, you have a really cool paper on you know the myth of the ecologically noble savage, where you've you know taught and you've talked a lot about you know representations of indigenous people. And I'm just wondering like it doesn't seem like we've really made much progress in the past 20 years about that. Maybe the rise of social media also gives people like more of a voice, and so we have more,

let's say, less than charitable or ignorant perspectives talking about indigenous peoples. I don't know, just where do you think we are as a field? And like what should anthropologists or scientists be doing? And um where do you see like the representation of indigenous peoples today as to where they were? You know, I think that paper was in the 90s or early 2000s when you wrote that paper. So I don't know. I mean, it doesn't seem like we've made much progress. Do you have any hope for well? I I think we've made a a bit of progress, but but here's the the catch. Uh Tribal populations have been oppressed, marginalized, and harmed in so many ways. And so the tendency is to essentially argue that these are really

nice people. And a lot of the problems that they face are a consequence of colonial incursions, which, you know, is is right on in many, many respects. And so to suggest that they are not stewards of the environment, or the other issue uh related to this is how much warfare or violence do they engage in, how often do they uh uh beat their wives, etc. Uh so if you point those things out uh that we regard as reprehensible from our cultural perspective, and so and I'll leave it I'll I won't leave it I'll emphasize from our cultural perspective uh then you essentially tell others who may not care about native peoples that these people aren't worth saving helping etc etc we got this reaction from cultural survival how dare you suggest the Yanamam are warlike because

we can't get donors to help them out if they believe that they are warlike because you know, screw them, they're not worth saving. Uh, may they kill each other off, you know, or something of that nature. And so uh the degree to which we want to help Native peoples depends on how much they measure up to values that we hold very, very highly. So there's a huge hypocrisy there uh going on. And you know, I think one should just essentially say, well that's true, but let's help them because they're terribly oppressed. They have uh like what you're doing in in in terms of of of health among the people you're working with, Ethiopia, uh, you know, let's do what we can to help out. So uh so we still have this

Rousseauian view that still dominates uh how people regard native peoples. Uh and it's you know much more complex than that in terms of uh you know, uh humans used to be nice until things got modern, you know, until we discovered warfare, until we discovered effective technology to take resources. And so, you know, and you can't go back. And if you do go back, you found out that they were just like us, uh, self-serving, uh, short-sighted, uh, no care for the environment. Well care a concern for the environment. In fact, I'll I'll I'll I've taken a little bit of a of a change on on conservation. There's some really good evidence for the Pacific that conservation does occur among resources. And essentially it has to do with the regulation that chiefs make

in terms of uh can fish where, in what seasons, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, but you know, these are very hierarchical sorts of systems, uh, and where there's some real punishment uh for people who who break the rules. And so one could say that uh we have examples, uh at least in the Pacific, uh, where there were really good and effective conservation uh methods employed. And you know, you wonder about the Pacific. Well, you know, you live in an island. Uh, you can't move away if you screw up your resources, and so the populations that uh manage to persist have ways of conserving resources by regulating uh the uh the exploitation of those resources. These systems have been destroyed largely because uh

entrepreneurs on those islands didn't want any restrictions put on their uh uh catches so they could make more money and uh so you had these rare systems of effective conservation that essentially were were wrecked uh by self-serving uh individuals who were, you know, uh one thing to look at is that these systems can work if the demand is local. That is, you're just trying to supply, but when you make the demand international, then there's no check on what uh uh what exploitation can occur. That's really interesting. Yeah. That's a really interesting distinction, local versus international. Yeah. I mean, these stories that you're telling us from the Anamama are just so uh vivid and wonderful.

Um I'm curious if you think there are any um puzzles in the field of evolutionary behavioral science that you think still remain unsolved, or what you think is the is the future of the field and where what directions we should be headed. Well, uh how cooperation works. Uh, you know, we have models of uh of kin selection, we have models of uh reciprocal altruism. Uh one thing that uh really impressed me and I don't know if it impressed other people is some of the work done by uh Kaplan and and and Mike Gervin in terms of intergenerational transfers of resources and how cooperation, you know, we tend to think of it as you know, mature adults, dyadic sorts of relationships, but you see this kind of horizontal pattern, uh, excuse me, vertical

pattern going on, where actually, and I'd love to test this, uh, it looks like young couples beginning their family lives often can't produce enough food that they need to consume. And so that requires a kind of vertical transmission from older relatives, not necessarily grandmas, as Chris and Hawkes would have it, but from others and uh how that works to me is, you know, as an economic anthropologist, is really, really interesting. And it's something that is, I think, uh really unique about humans. Although we see it, for example, in like killer whales, and how the mother-killer whale, the grandmother, seems to have this wonderful knowledge about where resources are in good times and bad times and also hunting techniques.

And so I think this kind of vertical generation interaction is a really important area of research that uh that we uh to uh take a look at. And part of it, you know, is stimulated early on by Kristen Hawk's work on the grandmother uh hypothesis. Although I like that an awful lot, it's kind of like overextended uh in terms of her suggesting that men are just showing off uh and are mate guarding and are not really concerned about their own kids, uh only about their reputations as big hunters uh or big time hunters. Uh but so that I think is is is to me, you know, personally, uh understanding those dynamics because it kind of we see these patterns in other animals too, whereas this kind of like uh intergenerational transfer of uh

of goods and services are actually you know cooperation. Yeah. And you know, uh especially considering that in Western societies we seem to be so severed from uh our extended families, and the extent of grandparental investment is so low because our culture is changing so quickly, and the knowledge that our grandparents has accumulated is currently out of date. You know, our elders have never been more irrelevant than in any time in human history, because what they know and what they know how to do is no longer relevant to the future to the to the most current generation because because you know society and technology is changing so quickly and what was useful in the previous generation may not be useful to the

present generation, which is diametrically opposite to what you see uh in hunter-gatherer societies or in uh forager societies, uh where uh uh elders are repositories of of wisdom and knowledge and and they're and they have a con and they're revered for for that for that knowledge. Uh and it's hard for us to wrap our heads around that from a Western uh standpoint. And and how we I mean I I guess another outstanding question will be how we have gotten to this place where we are are are so um disconnected from uh familial and kin sources of cooperation and so dependent on non-kin cooperation relative to at any other point uh in human evolutionary history. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. And you know the th the the gist of the problem is that uh older people are costs.

Yep. Uh because we have inadequate uh health care, especially in this country. And so what good are they? Except, you know, uh we've got to uh uh spend our money. Uh there's some interesting research uh like uh from Germany, where it turns out that uh uh grandmothers, especially uh living on pensions, allocate a large fraction of their income to their grandchildren, and so they're still trying to help out. So you're you're absolutely right. So what are the value of older people? Because back in the day, well, they had a lot of knowledge about uh resource distributions and how to adapt to uh environmental contingencies. But today uh the whole making a living situation is new to them just as it's you know uh new to you and so they have um

I hate to be cynical, you know, but you know, the the reasons that back in the day perhaps one could argue, and I'll just make this argument maybe it's not i inaccurate, they were valuable. They were fonts of knowledge. Uh they were good to have around. Uh and in fact, you know, I I gave uh Mike Gervin's got a new book coming out uh on uh old people. Was it 70? I think I forget what it's called. But but I sent him a picture of this old, old Yanomamo uh shaman, Dedahewa, being groomed by a bunch of little girls to another photograph to show you how valued old people were uh in societies and so i don't i i gave him two four deman was this guy who an old guy who knew how to make really potent curare uh and he would make the curare and give it to everybody he no longer

hunted but you know he was really really valuable uh to the to the local groups so uh the problem i see uh is that older people are viewed as costs and not viewed as uh as benefits to uh to have around, um, especially as people are scattered all over the place. You know, uh, who's gonna help you out on date night? You know, uh grandma's not around, or grandpa's not around. So I think uh as you're pointed out, we're we're entering a really kind of interesting time. Uh, but I think uh as I mentioned before, I think that if there were I'd like to you could do a comparative study perhaps, uh, where we have like uh universal health care, our grandparents or elderly kin more valued and loved compared to our own nation where uh you've got to

help out. Yeah. That our attitudes toward the elders would would depend on the costs and benefits that they're associated with. And if those costs are uh taken care of by someone else, then maybe we might view them as more of a net benefit for us. Exactly. I mean, that's a harsh way of looking at humanity. But I think the test implications are pretty obvious. It might be harsher to ignore that implication of humanity too, right? Yeah. Well, I'm sensitive because you know I'm an old person. I'm 77 years of age. But fortunately, uh we have you know adequate savings, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, and we still want to see our grandkids and and uh always believed that, you know, it push came to shove.

Yeah, thankfully thankfully, you know, we're we're in a a subculture, you know, uh a group of scientists where elders still are, you know, repositories of of knowledge and you do have a lot of valuable knowledge, you know, for us uh as as scientists, you know, based on all the experiences you've accumulated. Um and so thankfully you're at least still valuable to us. I don't know about your grandkids. Yeah, but I just had a eighteen hundred dollar chest x-ray. That uh uh blue crosses were sh anyway. Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah. I I just as like I lived in Germany for nine, ten years, and people on post Facebook would be like, Oh, we there we did this GoFundMe to like, you know, prevent like these poor

people who have like there's a childhood child with leukemia, and we did a go fund me so they wouldn't lose their house. And all the all the Americans are like, that's great. And all the Europeans are like, that's horrible. Yeah. Well w one of the mysteries that I often get asked about from an evolutionary perspective is um homosexuality. Uh I know you've done uh a bit of research on this question, and that to me I think is still one of the one of the major outstanding mysteries in evolutionary behavioral sciences is how how we can understand this uh phenomenon uh from a Darwinian perspective. Uh and I'm curious what you know what you think about that question, how you've approached it, and whether you uh have any insights on it, or whether you think there are certain

directions that are more promising uh than others. Well, Zach can answer that question too, because he helped uh affect my my thinking on the uh on the topic. Uh I think, you know, uh back in the day, everyone was expected to marry and have kids. And so I would say that in many cultures, homosexuality was no big deal, as long as you could, you know, uh have your uh sexual desire satisfied uh by a same-sex relationship. Uh what's really interesting is that uh if you look at the work of Lisa Dynam, uh women are much more uh flexible, uh, much more likely to engage in intimate relationships uh than men. And part of it is culture, but also I think that uh the selection pressure for women to be in heterosexual relationships

was much weaker because back in the day, you're gonna get married, girl, and you're gonna have kids, and there was no two ways about it. Uh, and so there wasn't, I'm thinking, I'm hypothesizing this point, a kind of uh uh having a a strength of you know, a strong heterosexual relationship in women that was relaxed because they were going to be heterosexual in the practical dimensions of it in terms of having kids. So yeah, be fluid. No, no, no, no kind of problem uh at all. And then also uh for men, uh heterosexuality is you know having kids is really important in every culture. And so I think what I want to say is that we seem to find it everywhere, that is homosexuality everywhere. And to me, it's not too surprising that the

uh mechanism, psychological mechanisms that lead to heterosexuality, they can be weak as long as the culture, or they can be weaker as long as the culture demands that in order to achieve uh high social status or reasonable social status, uh, is to engage in some heterosexuality that engages that leads to uh to reproduction. It's an interesting irony that it seems like the idea there is that um heteropatriarchal norms ironically led to the evolution of homosexuality, or at least it led to the relaxed selection pressures on heterosexuality. Because when you have such strong social norms that you have to have kids, um, that relaxes the selection pressure uh for um you know uh being exclusively heterosexual in

terms of your your uh desires and your orientation. Because if you're if you're gonna have kids anyway, then it you know, your your actual desires are free to be a little more off that beaten path. Yeah. Right. I I I think that's a it's it's a really good way of uh putting it. What's interesting is that if we look at Western societies, uh two to three percent of males seem to engage in be heterosexual, excuse me, homosexual. And that kind of low-up is kind of interesting. We keep finding that figure, you know all over the place. Uh and uh I'm not quite exactly sure what it means but it's it's uh it's really interesting. But I think yeah patriarchy is something that uh has allowed uh homosexuality or bisexuality whatever to

uh to emerge Now, at the same time, a de-emphasis on fertility also may be having the sort of same effect. How so could you elaborate on that? What was I thinking? Uh in terms of if it's if the expectation is that you don't need to have kids to achieve social status, then your sexuality is free to vary in terms of what your your inclinations may be. Interesting. Does that make sense? Maybe not. Um yeah, I think so. I mean, i it's interesting. At least in the contemporary US, social norms surrounding having kids and having uh a large family and devoting resources into family and child rearing, that tends to go along with uh homophobia or anti uh homosexual attitudes. And so at least in the US, uh kind of uh preference for uh monogamy,

uh intensive parental investment, you know, having lots of kids and being uh against homosexuality, those things those things uh go together um statistically. Um and so that that's an interesting um phenomenon. Uh I I'm not sure if if there are analogs in other places or how you would understand that. I I guess I can add a little bit to this. What Ray and I did and what what this work involved was also going through the ethnographic record to sort of document all the forms in which um you know same-sex behavior was documented to have taken. And you know, just like kinship systems where basically humans have invented every possible, seemingly probably not all, but maybe most of the possible ways we could organize

ourselves in terms of kinship, we also organize ourselves along these varied dimensions in regards of gender. And this sort of third gender or multigender system is quite common across societies. So we also kind of bring our Western perspective to say, you know, what is homosexuality, what is heterosexuality? And part of this work was trying to unpack that using more biologically and the sex research oriented terms, trying to disentangle behavior and preference. And as it turns out, you know, you have many different societies with multiple gender categories, not just a binary gender category. And in those contexts, let's say a male, a biological male who identifies as a man, may have sex or engage in sex with a biological male who identifies as a third

gender or even a fourth or a fifth gender categories in some contexts. And then neither of them are seen as a anormal or atypical, or would be considered engaging in homosexual relationships because it's still a pattern of sex that's socially acceptable given their gendered categories. But there's a wide range of gendered categories and you know social rules about who engages in sex based on what gendered category you're a part of. And the families kind of identify individuals at a young age and sort of socialize them into these different different gender categories. Um so it's uh it's the full spectrum of human variation uh in this intersection of gender and sex is as mind blowing. Well the Yeah, the the uh one one element is that typically

the uh uh those third, fourth genders, uh they don't have high social status most of the time. Uh they're regarded uh as as somewhat inferior. But as you all probably know, uh my friend and colleague Paul Vase has done the best research uh on this sort of phenomena. And you know, the the his classic work on the uh uh Samoans, the Fafine, uh essentially uh it's a culture where they recognize it and they don't discriminate against it, and they say, okay, well, that's the way he is, uh, and they have these legitimate relationships. Um he doesn't talk a lot about status in terms, but they uh clearly you know don't have as high a status but still they're they're accepted it's like you know that's the way uh uh that person is and they just kind of leave it at

that but he's uh has done some really interesting research both in Mexico and Samoa and now in Southeast Asia uh on how it works out in these societies where it's they're recognized uh as quote a legitimate s kind of orientation to hell. Do you think uh there is a a explanation or a theoretical approach to um you know sexual orientation, uh uh uh gender atypicality? Do you think there is a theoretical approach that that can offer a good explanation for these phenomena from an evolutionary perspective? Or do you think there there is you know one set of ideas that is more promising than another uh well you know the the thing that probably uh frustrates us all is that how can a behavior that leads to

zero fitness persist in a population generation after generation that's the the rub yeah and also it's kind of interesting that it seems to be two to three percent of any population and we overgeneralizing here. And so um there are some ideas about, you know, um the it was the the sexually antagonistic uh theory by some Italian researchers that somehow the the women uh are uh uh of or or excuse me the the the the the sibl females are the uh female siblings of these homosexual males have higher fertility and somehow I don't know what and and there's been some research that shows that it's not the case et cetera et cetera there's also you know a weird thing it may be a totally a side effect Ray Blancher's birth order uh model.

That the more uh older brothers you have, the higher the probability that you are going to be uh homosexual. So it has to do with andronization of the womb and how that has an effect on sexual orientation. So to me, that is the most promising area. And what it is kind of a you know essentially a side effect, a systematic side effect. It's not selected for, uh, but it just occurs as this process goes on, uh, as you have more and more boys. Are you familiar with the uh uh uh Ray Blanchard's theory, that area? Yeah, uh roughly familiar. Yeah, the idea that the more male siblings you have, the more likely a male homosexuality is to arise because of the uh something about the androgens and the immune response.

Right. Yeah. But what's really interesting is that it looks like it's very dosage dependent because the probability increases stepwise with each number of older brothers you have, which to me is really powerful indirect evidence that something is going on there to have this uh occur. Yeah. Yeah, that I that that seems probably the most promising direction, especially especially when you look at you know the the twin studies regarding homosexuality. It seems to be relatively low uh genetic heritability, which suggests that the prenatal environment might be um the the driving factor. Right. And for uh you know the uh the uh uh diamond's idea about uh uh female fluidity uh maybe as we mentioned before explained by

patriarchy. Yeah absolutely. Well still still I think a lot of different mechanisms. Yeah, very different mechanisms. I think it's still, you know, probably a you know really mysterious and interesting uh area of research that I think we still we we know so little about it. Um yeah, do you guys have any other questions? Uh just uh remember like the Don Simon's Evolution of Human Sexuality was such a great book where it talked about sort of using uh male and female homosexuality as a window into like mating preferences because it's not um hindered by having to coordinate with opposite sex and that that that thought just I wanted to ask, right, if there's anything if if people who are listening who are sort of newer generation evolutionary behavioral

sciences scientists, um where there might be sort of classic books like I think the evolution of human sexuality is one, I think the um evolutionary ecology, the Smith and Winter Halder, I think you have a time allocation paper that I think it's 92, Evolutionary Ecology and Human Behavior. That's also like a great classic book. Are there any sort of uh things that a new student might miss that would be sort of a real thing to either read or like go look at if it's up on YouTube or something? You know, is there something that you would recommend to people that they might miss if they're just starting out now. Oh, well, uh you brought up Don Simons uh and uh I was uh I don't know how many copies I uh or versions I've read of the evolution of human sexuality,

but it was many. In fact, I even translated some French stuff for him on Aceh uh Hunters. Uh and uh but Don got it so right in terms of uh male homosexuals are just like male heterosexuals except for the object of their desire. But you know, otherwise they're they're they're stereotypic males. Uh and that was a really uh important uh uh insight. Uh that uh so that book definitely uh is and the wonderful thing about that book, it's really well written. He's got a very terse style. In fact, almost sometimes too terse. But I remember going through version after version, and he was such a meticulous writer. He really wanted to be economical and to the point. And so I think it's a wonderful introduction to the field just because of its

readability. Yeah. Uh what uh to me, the most important thing I ever read was a paper by Richard Alexander uh called the uh evolution of of sociality, I forget in the annual review of ecology and systematics. And as a young scholar, it really you know answered a question, you know, like why do humans live in groups? Well, Dick had an explanation for that. And so, and that steps you into you know the whole field of social organization. We're a social species. And it was like uh it was a revelation uh to to me. And also uh Dick was a very good mentor. Uh and his uh what's his book, The Evolution of morality. Yeah, the biology of moral systems. Yeah. Biology of moral systems is something I would recommend to anybody.

He didn't have the writing skill of a Don Simon. But still, it's it was one of the most important books. So I've it was kind of like, you know, I I had I was a Santa Barbarian, like you are, you know, and so I had Don Simons on one side, and then I had Richard Alexander on the other side. So I kind of, you know, had an appreciation for both points of view, uh, even though I was much more of a behavioral ecologist like uh Dick Alexander was, but still uh appreciated uh Don's uh Don's work. Yeah, by by some sequence of events. I mean, I know what they are, but uh so I was a graduate student when Don was retiring, and I went to his office uh to get some of his books, and one of my most cherished uh science

artifacts is I have Don Simon's copy of Richard Alexander's Biology of Moral Systems, and it's barked up in the margins all over. And I can I can read about 90% of the markup, and it's incredible because Don is so gracious to him. But there's times where Don is marking, oh yeah, no, this is like kind of baby counting. I mean, he doesn't use exactly that word. Maybe he does a few times because it's just notes to himself, but it's real time sort of Don's thinking about Richard Alexander is incredible, wonderful, but here is where this sort of assumption of sort of omnipresent or omniscient fitness maximizing doesn't work. It's an incredible uh thing to read those those m notes in the margins. Oh well.

I'm I'm envious that you have that. Maybe scan it. No, that'd be great. The the the only uh physical re rem uh uh artifact I have from Don Simons was was um uh as he was writing the evolution of human sexuality, his tenure was on the line. Uh and we were gonna play tennis. And one day he said, he gave me his tennis racket. He says, I can't play tennis. I've got to work on this book. I only have time to run. And so he gave me this uh this head racket with a red throat. I don't know if you play tennis, you'd know that's an old kind of uh uh aluminum uh racket. But then of course I broke the racket eventually after about a couple of years. Oh, Don? He was a great guy. Yeah. How did Don? I mean, my I understood John Shuby once told me that I think uh Sherry Washburn was at

Berkeley and didn't like that Don was doing evolution applied to humans, and that's why Don ended up at UCSB. Do you know that story? Well, I know that Washburn didn't like uh uh modern evolutionary approaches, especially to human behavior. Uh and was Washburn on his thesis committee? I don't know. I mean, this is all sort of becoming fuzzy in my mind because this is something John told me, John Thuby told me just like you know, interpersonally. Um, so it wasn't something, but I thought Simons had been somehow either a student of, I'm not sure. I actually don't know. This is something I'm fuzzy on about Sherry Washburn and Don Simons and the relationship. So they had a what kind of relationship?

Well, I I don't know if I don't know if Don was a faculty uh and then sort of was trying to get tenure and was a colleague of Sherry Washburn, or um if he was more junior and worked with Sherry Washburn and then Washburn was uh uh a senior anthropologist Berkeley. Right. And he was, you know, uh uh one of the things that was the uh so and he was very, you know, if you look at Washburn and Lancaster, uh man the hunter kind of kind of approach, he did kind of take a an evolutionary approach where he suggested that hunting was a thing that made us humans, uh, which in fact hunting made us interesting. Uh but I don't know that it made us humans any more than uh grandmothers made us uh humans. Right.

Uh but uh but then he kind of uh I'm trying to recall I probably can't get it right so I won't say it but he wasn't very in favor of modern approaches or or Eil Wilson kind of approaches to the to understanding human behavior. But Don got his degree at Berkeley, right? Right. Yeah exactly. And he did his thesis on Reese's monkeys, Reese's play. Yeah, that's right. Done in uh Kayo. Yeah. Yeah. Well, uh is there anything we should have asked you, Ray? I don't think so, but you're absolutely right. An hour and a half went by really uh rapidly. Yeah. Over uh an hour and a half because you guys are really engaging uh and ask a lot of really uh interesting uh questions. I would say, you know, you started asking questions about uh Darkness in El Dorado.

And uh if my view is essentially a point of view that uh Alice Trager wrote and her characterization that went on there. Uh one thing that was really interesting. So in my view, it was a kind of a hit job. and I don't know who paid for the hit. Uh, but uh Tierney published the book, showed up at an early meeting of the American Anthropological Association, and then disappeared off the face of the earth. So he could never be questioned about why he took various views, But you know, there was a whole group of people who really didn't like Shagla. And part of it had to do with his evolutionary approaches to human behavior. The other part had to do with his demonstration that some uh foraging horticultural people were really aggressive, engaged in a lot of warfare,

and regarded it as, you know, uh uh a really manly thing to do if you were in that culture, which, if they had bothered or read anything about Native American warlike cultures, they wouldn't have been surprised what Shagnon found out about the about the Alamamos. So I think uh that book was, I would call it uh a hit jump. Uh, and that essentially tyranny pulled together all the people who didn't like Shagna and who did not like him for, I think, illegitimate reasons. Uh and so you have that uh that book. Interestingly, the last I heard about Tierney was that he was in conversation with Wakefield about publishing someone. I'm talking about the Wakefield who argued that uh vaccines were causing autism

among among kids. Wow, that's like a circle of hell right there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he's got a famous brother, John Tierney, who who's a uh a journalist, right? Uh, who does pretty good uh research. Uh he publishes a lot in the city journal, but anyway. So anyway, uh I I thought when I first read it, I got this uh autocopy of the book that Kim Hill had sent me, and I read it and for days I was I was in a daze because I just couldn't believe and here you're here's something I'd worked with and it just uh the the depressing psychological impact and stressful it had on me was was was amazing but can you imagine what it the impact it had on Chad Yeah. In terms of you know what it did for his uh his well-being.

Yeah it's just uh uh incredible. But I think now that most people realize that it was a hit job uh and uh much of what was said was was inaccurate. Shagna wasn't perfect. None of us are perfect. But still none of us have been kind of like celebrated as a horrible person in front of the the whole world. And so just try to think of what what impact it would have on you if you were the subject of that sort of uh of uh phenomena. Yeah, yeah. As I think John Tuby once put it, it's like very few people get falsely accused of sort of genocide, essentially. Uh and just even the prima facie case of, you know, a measles epidemic with vaccines like just doesn't work. And so the fact that it had any footing at all is just incredible.

Um, you know, and it's just yeah, it's a terrible, terrible travesty of sort of fact checking and scientific literacy. Yeah. Well, one thing I'll say one last thing about that is that uh James Neal and Napoleon Chagnon should have been awarded a humanitarian prize by the American Anthropological Association because Neil and his research uh discovered that the Yanamama were a virgin soil as in terms of measles. He got the measles vaccine uh into Venezuela uh in anticipation of, excuse me, with plans to vaccinate, discovered that uh a measles epidemic had had uh broken out. And so it was Shagnon and the evangelical uh missionaries, Protestant missionaries, who decided to vaccinate from the outside in, which is the way you deal

with with epidemics. You don't go from the inside out, you go from the outside in. And without their efforts, thousands of Yanomamal would have perished. But instead, the story became positive epidemic. Yeah, yeah. It's incredible. Yeah. It's unfortunately, uh the that's the yeah. I mean, hopefully history, you know, if the historical record is corrected, but hopefully that story will be told well. Anyone who makes a movie, uh, there should be a movie about Nap Shagnon. I I think that that's a low-hanging fruit right there. Uh well, there may be. I know his son was recording things. Uh, I don't know what what became of that footage, but there should be at least a documentary, if not a movie, about Nap Shagnon.

David, get on that with your LA folks. All right, I'll I'll look into it. Well, this is really fun. Ray, uh, thank you so much for uh the the hour and a half and also for for all the years and for for being present during all those times. Your work is, you know, why many of us are here, either directly or indirectly, certainly directly for Zach. Um uh, You know, I'll let him speak for himself on the way out here or two. But just thank you so much for all the work that you've done and continue to do and inspire people to do this fun, weird um career of applying evolution to human behavior. Well, uh at the same time, I'm really uh impressed by this this new generation of evolutionary scientists in terms of your uh statistical skills which we were l uh largely

uh lacking in terms of your ability to uh uh create interesting uh hypotheses to to test and find ways of testing them and uh so i think uh you guys have become the you know cutting edge now of of uh Yeah, thanks so much, Ray. It's great to talk to you. And um yeah, you know, it's just serendipitous that my introduction to anthropology happened to be in your your lecture hall. And um I guess I'll close with one one funny story. You know, Ray has such a commanding presence in the classroom. He's obviously a super nice guy, really collegial, but in the classroom he takes it very seriously. And I remember it was my first time back to the university in this huge lecture hall. And you're talking about the Yanamamo and these ethnographies we're going to read.

And I think it was one of the first or second lectures and you know you you have a nice, very commanding presence. And then up in the back row there was this kid one day reading a newspaper and you just like stopped your lecture mid-sentence and said something to the effect of like, You can do that elsewhere, you better put that away right now or leave the room. And it was the whole 300 students just instantly got silent and all the attention came right back to the lecture. And then years later, like five years later, I was meeting a friend of my brother's and he introduced himself to me and said, You might remember me. You remember Ray Haymes' class in culture anthropology? He called out that guy reading the newspaper?

That was me. Really? Yeah. So, I mean, you were legendary on the on the campus of University of Nebraska for bringing these stories of the Yanamomo and ethnography. And there's a whole uh group and generation of us that came from Nebraska that wouldn't have any idea about evolutionary social science had it not been for your your presence there. So thank you for your service to Nebraska and and this is and our communities more broadly. Well, thank you very much and uh interesting uh story. Uh it was effective. It was an effective. I I'll try it in my own teaching someday. Did anything have did the person elaborate? Did they say sort of, you know, I was all of a sudden after that day, I sort of woke up

earlier, worked harder and that kind of thing. Yeah, it just scared him, scared him straight, you know. No more. Yep. He paid attention. My view back then was that I don't take rule. So, you know, don't ask uh I gotta answer this phone. But uh so read your newspaper in the lobby. Thanks, Rick. All right. Great. It was a pleasure. Uh take care. Bye. Well, you're still here listening, which means that you must like what you're hearing. So what can people do if they like what they're hearing, Dave? They can uh leave a good review. They can share it with uh this episode with somebody on social media, or um the old fashioned way of looking over at them through the um sky or air, the ground walking around, um, you know, using their voice, not sitting on

a screen and saying, Hey, look at this thing, which is also on the computer. So I guess, you know, whatever, it's all on the computer. Yeah. I mean I mean sending vibrations through the air by vibrating our vocal cords. Uh, you know, that's it. Yeah, if you're reductive about it, that's true. It's all weird when you're when you're reducing. I mean, that's that's the OG social media is just l literal vibes. Can I just say that the uh Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys is an excellent, excellent song. Brian Wilson really just turned as they say, he turned the uh the recording studio into an instrument. So uh if you haven't listened to Good Vibrations in a while, you should check it out. It's a great album and please send some good vibes our way, kind reviews, check us out on

Patreon. Uh we we love to hear all of it. So uh we'll see you next week. Fantastic. Listen to some good music today. Yeah.