Anthropologist Applies Contemporary Research Methods to Promote a Better Understanding of Darwin's Theory of Evolution

Agustin Fuentes, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame has written a book entitled Evolution of Human Behavior in which he provides a rigorous synthesis that investigates methods of research currently being used which he employs in his connection of the study of human behavior and evolutionary theory. Fuentes main approach in his text is to incorporate his area of academic expertise, anthropology, to current debates regarding the evolution of human behavior, human evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, and biological anthropology.

Fuentes text contributes to a better understanding of the context of human behavioral evolutionary study to contemporary thought regarding the evolution of human behavior, human evolutionary ecology, evolutionary psychology, and biological anthropology. Fuentes attempts his correlational approach by reviewing several popular approaches that include human behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology, memetics, and gene-culture co-evolution--on how and why humans have evolved behaviorally over the past millennia of human evolutionary development. In addition, Fuentes includes analysis that has been developed from genomic research, recent fossil findings, and ethnographic studies. Fuentes intention is to provide a holistic accounting of the interconnections between the patterns of human evolution that have become a part of the established nature of the development of humanity and human modes of behavior.

It is Fuentes contention that: "The social lives of humans, the way we live with other animals and the way we change the world around us all play major roles in making us who we are today."

Most recently, Fuentes has produced an article in the June issue of Anthropology Today entitled "A New Synthesis: Resituating Approaches to the Evolution of Human Behaviour," in which he argues that: "evolution is more than natural selection and "survival of the fittest."

"In the 150 years since the publication of Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species' we have learned a great deal," Fuentes said. "It turns out that behavior, especially behavior that changes the environment around us, can be a powerful factor in the processes of evolution. It also seems that the way information is passed from generation to generation can involve much more than genes."

By using dogs as an example to prove his assessments, Fuentes combines accepted evolutionary knowledge with anthropological assumptions to develop his theories of how human behavior has developed over time. It is Fuentes contention that his insights provide a more accurate understanding of how human processes by which our cultures, bodies and ecologies change over time.

Fuentes completes his analogy between dogs and humans by explaining: "We have evolved the ability to care and cooperate intensely with other people, especially friends and relatives," Fuentes said. "But as humans we don't stop there. We can extend the net of caring across our species and even to other species. I suggest, following the philosopher Donna Haraway and the author Meg Olmert, that the relationship between humans and dogs is an important evolutionary one. It involves biology as well as our behavior. Humans and dogs have been shaping one another for millennia."