Polygyny Makes Men Bigger, Tougher...And Meaner, by Peter Frost
Humans differ in paternal investment—the degree to which fathers help mothers care for their offspring. They differ in this way between individuals, between populations, and between stages of cultural...
View ArticleThe Contradictions of Polygyny, by Peter Frost
In my last column, I reviewed the findings of Butovskaya et al. (2015) on testosterone and polygyny in two East African peoples: - Testosterone levels were higher in the polygynous Datoga than in the...
View ArticleThe Missing Hour of Sleep, by Peter Frost
African Americans sleep on average almost an hour less than do Euro Americans. The two groups have mean sleep times of 6.05 hours and 6.85 hours. This finding has recently been discussed by Brian...
View ArticleThe Fellowship Instinct, by Peter Frost
Religiosity is moderately heritable—25 to 45% according to twin studies (Bouchard, 2004; Lewis and Bates, 2013). These figures are of course underestimates, since any noise in the data gets classified...
View ArticleEvolution of Long Hair, by Peter Frost
I've published an article on the evolution of long head hair in humans. The following is the abstract: In many humans, head hair can grow to a much greater length than hair elsewhere on the body. This...
View ArticleA Pauper's Death, by Peter Frost
Black metal is a musical subgenre that grew out of death metal and, more broadly, heavy metal. In general, it pushes certain aspects of this genre to even farther extremes: fast tempos, shrieking...
View ArticleIs "Sick" the Right Word?, by Peter Frost
Is sociopathy an illness? We often think so ... to the point that the word "sick" has taken on a strange secondary meaning. If we call a ruthless, self-seeking person "sick," we mean he should be...
View ArticleA Modern Myth, by Peter Frost
What sort of ideas will guide our elites twenty years from now? You can find out by observing university students, especially those in the humanities and social sciences. One popular idea is that race...
View ArticleA Look Back Over 2015, by Peter Frost
I wrote the above last January, fearing that Europe would see an acceleration of the massive demographic change already under away—the Great Replacement, to use a term coined by Renaud Camus: Oh, the...
View ArticleFarewell to Henry, by Peter Frost
Henry Harpending (1944-2016) died this past Sunday. He had a stroke a year ago, and then a second one three weeks ago, but apparently he died of a lung infection. This is one of the risks of getting...
View ArticleGender Reassignment of Children, by Peter Frost
I remember feeling some attraction to girls in Grade 2, but it really wasn't until Grade 8 that everything fell into place. I'm talking about puberty. Before high school, I was a boy and not a young...
View ArticleYoung, Male, and Single, by Peter Frost
It sucks being young, male, and single. Don't think so? Go to the Interactive Singles Map of the United States and see how it looks for the 20 to 39 age group. Almost everywhere single men outnumber...
View ArticleThe Jews of West Africa?, by Peter Frost
There has been much talk here about Chanda Chisala's article "The IQ gap is no longer a black and white issue." Much of the article focuses on the Igbo (known also as Ibo), a people who live in the...
View ArticleThe Puzzle of European Hair, Eye, and Skin Color, by Peter Frost
Most humans have black hair, brown eyes, and brown skin. Europeans are different: their hair is also brown, flaxen, golden, or red, their eyes also blue, gray, hazel, or green, and their skin pale,...
View ArticleNot Everyone Does It, by Peter Frost
All humans love to kiss, so kissing must go back to early hominids and even chimps and bonobos. This is how ethologists and evolutionary psychologists think when they write about the subject. Just one...
View ArticleSurvival of the Nicest-Smelling?, by Peter Frost
It has long been known that we vary not only in our sensitivity to different smells but also in our preferences for them—the degree to which they seem pleasant or unpleasant. This variability often...
View ArticleGuess Who First Came to America?, by Peter Frost
Before the Europeans came, the Americas were settled by three waves of people from northeast Asia: the oldest wave beginning some 12,000 to 15,000 years ago, which gave rise to most Amerindians, and...
View ArticleIn the Eye of the Ancient Beholder, by Peter Frost
Mention the term ‘skin color’ and people usually think of race or ethnicity. Yet this way of thinking became dominant only when Europeans began moving out and colonizing the rest of the world,...
View ArticleThe Past Is Another Country, by Peter Frost
This is one of several findings with a common theme: the farther back in time we go, the less familiar people look. And we don't have to go very far. This fact came up in a column I wrote about the...
View ArticleA Genetic Marker for Empathy?, by Peter Frost
One of my interests is affective empathy, the involuntary desire not only to understand another person's emotional state but also to make it one's own—in short, to feel the pain and joy of other...
View Article
