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Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. [1] [2] It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations. [3]
Evolutionary approaches to human behavior were, and to some extent continue to be, considered a form of genetic determinism and dismissive of the role of culture and experience in shaping human behavior (see Standard social science model). [5] [17]
Human evolution (origins of society and culture) – Transition of human species to anthropologically modern behavior; Inversion (evolutionary biology) – Hypothesis in developmental biology; Mosaic evolution – Evolution of characters at various rates both within and between species
The evidence on which scientific accounts of human evolution are based comes from many fields of natural science. The main source of knowledge about the evolutionary process has traditionally been the fossil record, but since the development of genetics beginning in the 1970s, DNA analysis has come to occupy a place of comparable importance.
Dual inheritance theory (DIT), also known as gene–culture coevolution or biocultural evolution, [1] was developed in the 1960s through early 1980s to explain how human behavior is a product of two different and interacting evolutionary processes: genetic evolution and cultural evolution.
The evolution of human intelligence is closely tied to the evolution of the human brain and to the origin of language. The timeline of human evolution spans approximately seven million years, [ 1 ] from the separation of the genus Pan until the emergence of behavioral modernity by 50,000 years ago.
Her theory about human behavior, and the problems we create with that behavior, distinguishes the prefrontal cortex as uniquely different from the rest of the neocortex. The prefrontal cortex, with its agenda of integration, is the part of the brain that can get the other parts to work together for the good of the individual.
paleoanthropology and paleontology of both human and non-human primates; primatology and primate ethology; the sociocultural evolution of human behavior, including phylogenetic approaches to historical linguistics; the cultural anthropology and sociology of humans; the archaeological study of human technology and of its changes over time and space