Vivek V. Venkataraman

nice article, congrats!

Orang Asli Health and Lifeways Project Welcome to the homepage of the Orang Asli Health and Lifeways Project (OA HeLP) OA HeLP  is  a systematic  and comparative study of biology, health, behavior, and culture among the Orang Asli, the...

We are currently testing these ideas with empirical data collected by our project in Malaysia, the Orang Asli Health and Lifeways Project (OA HeLP). Stay tuned!

www.orangaslihealth.org

Why dampened inflammatory activity?

Four possible reasons explored here: low levels of adiposity, high physical activity levels, diets consisting of minimally processed foods, and infections from helminths

We propose that non-industrialized peoples have lower osteoarthritis risk dude to having dampened inflammatory activity, a key factor in osteoarthritis pathogenesis.

Check out our new paper in the journal Osteoarthritis and Cartilage, led by Ian J. Wallace.

"Dampened inflammation and reduced risk of osteoarthritis among non-industrialized societies"

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

From a 2004 autobiographical piece by Bruce published in Before Farming (now Hunter Gatherer Research), well worth a read!

Bruce Winterhalder was once asked to share some professional insights.

Here they are:

How Allocating Work Aided Our Evolutionary Success Many societies divide labor by gender and age. A biological anthropologist considers when and why this behavior arose.

From the archive. Societies divide labor by gender and age. A biological anthropologist considers when and why this behavior arose. Read more: www.sapiens.org/biology/labo...

Did Women Hunt in Our Evolutionary Past? When Western gender ideology gets in the way of good science

A great piece on the women's hunting debate by Elena Bridgers that covers some of our work: elenabridgers.substack.com/p/did-women-...

"We should be careful not to fall into the trap that only hunting mattered in the Paleolithic, and therefore only a revisionist picture of our evolutionary past in which women hunted will ever fully justify egalitarian gender norms in contemporary society."

Did Women Hunt in Our Evolutionary Past? When Western gender ideology gets in the way of good science

A great piece on the women's hunting debate by Elena Bridgers that covers some of our work: elenabridgers.substack.com/p/did-women-...

Review of Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary by Agustín Fuentes – Grasshoppermouse Blog posts and talk slides

My review of Sex is a Spectrum, by Agustín Fuentes 🧪 #BioAnth blog.edhagen.net/posts/2025-0...

Leaders for the World We Think We Live In Why do we trust steady hands in some contexts and risk-takers in others? Evolutionary theory reveals how environments shape our shifting choices of leaders.

Some thoughts on how preferences for #leaders change with our environments:

Leaders for the World We Think We Live In | Psychology Today www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ecol...

#LeadSciSky #EvPsych #CultEvol #socialpsyc #BehSci 🧪 @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social @psychologytoday.com

Cover image of Neil Kraus’s The Fantasy Economy: Neoliberalism inequality and the education reform movement

Do not accept the premise that education is to blame for abysmal jobs outcomes.

“The fantasy economy's framing of economic inequality… focuses exclusively on education…deflects attention away from decades of public policies and changing business practices that have…contributed to stagnating wages”

Body-based units of measure in cultural evolution Measurements based on body part length have cognitive and behavioral advantages, which accounts for their widespread and persistent use.

Published two years ago in @science.org:

"Body-based units of measure in cultural evolution"

We looked into how, and why, human societies have measured things with their bodies.

A little thread about the deep ancestry and cross-cultural heritage of measurement:

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

I’ve been trying to figure out which scientists in the human evolutionary sciences were directly influenced by Robert Ardrey’s books.

Mostly the answer is a resounding no.

Our current thinking on this topic is in this preprint on Man the Hunter.

osf.io/preprints/os...

In light of this, was Ardrey perhaps more influential for evolutionary psychology than for human behavioral ecology and cultural evolution?

But...I did learn that Leda Cosmides was influenced by The Territorial Imperative early in her career.

www.independent.co.uk/news/science...

I’ve been trying to figure out which scientists in the human evolutionary sciences were directly influenced by Robert Ardrey’s books.

Mostly the answer is a resounding no.

From ancient Greece to the Arabic golden age, scholars have been driven by their curiosity to investigate astronomy, history, philosophy, and sundry other disciplines. Is there a structure to that curiosity? Are astronomers as likely to also be historians or to also be philosophers?

good question. no, we didn't, but perhaps good to consider for our round of revision! thanks

Changes in diet drove physical evolution in early humans A Dartmouth-led study shows that early humans developed a taste for grassy carbohydrate-rich plants 700,000 years before they evolved the ideal teeth to chew the tougher plant fibers efficiently. The ...

Changes in diet drove physical evolution in early humans www.eurekalert.org/news-release...

This is fascinating. It is also evidence in favour of taking biological agency seriously, rather than treating it as an "as if" property.

We find evidence for behavioral drive in the hominin fossil record. Changes in graminivorous behavior preceded corresponding changes in dental morphology by ~700,000 years

"Behavior drives morphological change during human evolution"

Our new article is out in @science.org today

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Despite relatively few hours slept (6 hrs), Orang Asli exhibited relatively efficient sleep, potentially challenging the notion that longer sleep is universally beneficial.

These findings underscore the complex interplay of biology, ecology, and culture in shaping sleep and circadian rhythms.

Just like in industrialized societies, aging results in earlier wake-up times. Despite many differences between small-scale and industrialized societies in sleep behavior, this may be one way circadian rhythms are constrained across the economic spectrum.

Surprisingly, few strong effects due to built environment (like living a concrete house vs a traditional one) or labor patterns (working wage labor vs hunting-gathering/farming)

Access to permanent electricity (like powerlines):
-pushed back bedtime; not so with generators or solar lamps
-resulted in less sleep, but better quality sleep (fewer awakenings)