Originally Posted by CLL Dodge:
“A wild assumption that humans are monogamous (most societies are not: 83% are polygynous, 0.05% are polyandrous, and the rest are probably monogamous).*
And infanticide has been the norm rather than the exception, Even today there are millions of missing females in Asian countries (estimates indicate that 30.5 million females are "missing" from China, 22.8 million in India, 3.1 million in Pakistan, 1.6 million in Bangladesh, 1.7 million in West Asia, 600,000 in Egypt, and 200,000 in Nepal).** It was widespread in Victorian Britain (not with such a sexual bias) until methods of contraception became available.
*The Oxford Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, Edited by Robin Dunbar and Louise Barret, 2007, Chapter 30 Ecological and socio-cultural impacts on mating and marriage systems by Bobbi S. Low
**Hardness of Heart/Hardness of Life: The Stain of Human Infanticide, by Larry S. Milner, 2000”
I am aware of this but the article is for a general audience and is more about our primate evolutionary roots than our social behaviour in recorded history.
Humans can be heartless bastards (especially in extreme poverty) that is nothing new.
A few recent articles that may be of interest.
I fail to see the 'controversy 'over the Hobbit (
Homo floresiensis) - the fossil remains are obviously
not humans suffering from Dwarfism and Microcephaly or Down's Syndrome.
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160...-was-not-human
http://www.nature.com/news/what-spar...losion-1.19379
http://blogs.plos.org/paleocomm/2016...-tyrannosaurs/