S. L. Washburn

Social life of early man

1. F. Bourliere Patterns of Social Grouping among Wild Primates 2. Jean Piveteau Behavior and Ways of Life of the Fossil Primates 3. M.R.A. Chance The Nature and Special Features of the Instinctive Social Bond of Primates 4. Heini P. Hediger The Evolution of Territorial Behavior 5. Adolph H. Schultz Some Factors Influencing the Social Life of Primates in General and of Early Man in Particular 6. S.L. Washburn and Irven De Vore Social Behavior of Baboons and Early Man 7. F.M. Bergounioux Notes on the Mentality of Primitive Man 8. Alberto C. Blanc Some Evidence for the Ideologies of Early Man 9. G.F. Debetz The Social Life of Early Paleolithic man as Seen through the Work of the Soviet Anthropologists 10. William S. Laughlin Acquisition of Anatomical Knowledge by Ancient Man 11. Kenneth P. Oakley On Mans Use of Fire, with Comments on Tool-making and Hunting 12. Luis Pericot The Social Life of Spanish Paleolithic Hunters as Shown by Levantine Art 13. Henri V. Vallois The Social Life of Early Man: The Evidence of Skeletons 14. A. Irving Hallowell The Procultural Foundations of Human Adaptation 15. Carl O. Saeur Sedentary and Mobile Bents in Early Societies 16. Ernst W. Caspari Some Genetic Implications of Human Evolution 17. David A. Hamburg Relevance of Recent Evolutionary Changes to Human Stress Biology 18. Iago Galdston Comments

The evolution game

Abstract Theories of human evolution should be so constituted that they promote progress. This has not been the case in the past, as vividly shown in the controversies over the Taung skull. The “facts” of human evolution are so uncertain that it may be best to regard the study of human evolution as a game, rather than as a science.

Relationship of Australopithecus and Homo

The hominid status of Australopithecus was originally challenged following the initial discovery at Taung, and has again been recently questioned by C. E. Oxnard on the basis of mensurational studies of a few, usually fragmentary, and sometimes ill-preserved skeletal parts. However, numerous morphometric studies of the postcranial skeleton of this taxon demonstrate close overall resemblance to Hominidae, some resemblances to extant African Pongidae, but scant, if any, resemblance to Pongo . The overall structure of Australopithecus is unmistakably hominid when joints and functional complexes relevant to posture and to locomotion are examined. Although Australopithecus demonstrably coexisted with early Homo populations in sub-Saharan Africa, the australopithecine grade affords an appropriate ancestral morphotype for the emergence of the genus Homo .

Fifty years of studies on human evolution

The Bulletins prevailing concern is with dangers to human well being and even survival that have scientific-technological roots or ingredients and seldom any self-evident solutions. By implication, scientific research itself may sometimes be projected more as threat than promise. At the same time, current legislative challenges to the teaching of evolutionary science by “creation scientists” may indicate a lack of widespread public understanding of the difference between the creed of science and other kinds of creeds. Professor Sherwood L. Washburn speaks indirectly, but eloquently to both of these issues.It is difficult for non-specialists to form an impression of how, and how much, progress occurs in most scientific research. The overall pace of the advance is easily obscured by multiplying new discoveries, new questions and new methods. Among them often are false leads that for a time set unproductive directions. To convey the zigzag path of accomplishment across decades as a vivid, intelligible patte...