scholarly journals Offspring fertility and grandchild survival enhanced by maternal grandmothers in a pre-industrial human society

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon N. Chapman ◽  
Mirkka Lahdenperä ◽  
Jenni E. Pettay ◽  
Robert F. Lynch ◽  
Virpi Lummaa
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life History ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Maternal Grandmother ◽  
Helping Behaviour ◽  
Paternal Grandmother ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractHelp is directed towards kin in many cooperative species, but its nature and intensity can vary by context. Humans are one of few species in which grandmothers invest in grandchildren, and this may have served as an important driver of our unusual life history. But helping behaviour is hardly uniform, and insight into the importance of grandmothering in human evolution depends on understanding the contextual expression of helping benefits. Here, we use an eighteenth-nineteenth century pre-industrial genealogical dataset from Finland to investigate whether maternal or paternal grandmother presence (lineage relative to focal individuals) differentially affects two key fitness outcomes of descendants: fertility and survival. We found grandmother presence shortened spacing between births, particularly at younger mother ages and earlier birth orders. Maternal grandmother presence increased the likelihood of focal grandchild survival, regardless of whether grandmothers had grandchildren only through daughters, sons, or both. In contrast, paternal grandmother presence was not associated with descendants’ fertility or survival. We discuss these results in terms of current hypotheses for lineage differences in helping outcomes.

The Politics of Anthropology

1988 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Gellner
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Life History ◽  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Human History ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
Cumulative Change ◽  
Great Chain Of Being ◽  
Jacob's Ladder

ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY ORIGINALLY FOUND THEIR more immediate inspiration in an evolutionary or Jacob's Ladder vision of human societies, the idea of Progress. Social forms were seen as located along some great Chain of Being, which eventually leads to this-worldly salvation by this-worldly means. But there the resemblance ends. Sociology was rooted in a primarily historical evolutionism, in the perception, by the generation of Condorcet and Hegel, that human history is a story of cumulative change, and in the hope that the pattern of this change was the key to the meaning of life. History was to reveal the inner potential and destiny of human society. By contrast, the evolutionism which somewhat later, around the middle of the nineteenth century, gave birth to anthropology, was markedly biological, and came to be much influenced by Darwin.

Darwin’s Unfinished Symphony

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Kevin N. Laland
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Behavior ◽  
Life History ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Satisfactory Explanation ◽  
Foraging Patterns ◽  
Behavioral Diversity ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter poses the question of the evolution of intellectual faculties. But a satisfactory explanation demands insight into the evolutionary origins of some of our most striking attributes—our intelligence, language, cooperation, teaching, and morality—yet most of these features are not just distinctive, they are unique to our species. That makes it harder to glean clues to the distant history of our minds through comparison with other species. At the heart of this challenge lies the undeniable fact that we humans are an amazingly successful species. Our range is unprecedented; we have colonized virtually every terrestrial habitat on Earth; exhibit behavioral diversity that is unparalleled in the animal kingdom; and resolved countless ecological, social, and technological challenges. When one considers that the life history, social life, sexual behavior, and foraging patterns of humans have also diverged sharply from those of other apes, there are grounds for claiming that human evolution exhibits unusual and striking features that go beyond our self-obsession and demand explanation.

Draper, Darwin, and the Oxford evolution debate of 1860

2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory A. Wickliff
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Willingness To Accept ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Thomas Henry Huxley ◽  
Early Adoption ◽  
John William Draper ◽  
Century Science ◽  
American Scientist

Historians of science have written much about the famous exchange over Darwinism in 1860 at the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science between Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Henry Huxley. The event is one of the most famous in nineteenth-century science. But little has been written about the paper that served as the occasion of that debate. The paper was one presented by John William Draper, a British-born American scientist and physician. A full transcription of Draper's paper is presented here, with a discussion of Draper's earlier writing and lectures on geology, evolution, and the philosophy of history. Together Draper's writings show his early adoption of key principles of the development hypothesis, his willingness to accept the principle of human evolution, and his claims for what he saw as the evolutionary nature of human society.

Clothing in Context — Nineteenth-Century Dress and Textiles in the Thomas Hardy Archive

Costume ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy Johnston
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Thomas Hardy ◽  
Famous People ◽  
Tess Of The D'urbervilles ◽  
Textiles And Clothing ◽  
Insight Into

This article will consider how dress, textiles, manuscripts and images in the Thomas Hardy Archive illuminate his writing and reveal the accuracy of his descriptions of clothing in novels including Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Rural clothing, fashionable styles, drawings and illustrations will shed new light on his writing through providing an insight into the people's dress he described so eloquently in his writing. The textiles and clothing in the Archive are also significant as nineteenth-century working-class dress is relatively rare. Everyday rural clothing does not tend to survive, so a collection belonging to Hardy's family of country stonemasons provides new opportunities for research in this area. Even more unusual is clothing reliably provenanced to famous people or writers, and such garments that do exist tend to be from the middle or upper classes. This article will show how the combination of surviving dress, biographical context and literary framework enriches understanding of Hardy's words and informs research into nineteenth-century rural dress.

Women and Agency in Bankim’s Rajmohan’s Wife and Tagore’s The Home and The World

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
Author(s):  
Manju Dhariwal ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Indian English ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
English Novel ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Status Of Women

Written almost half a century apart, Rajmohan’s Wife (1864) and The Home and the World (1916) can be read as women centric texts written in colonial India. The plot of both the texts is set in Bengal, the cultural and political centre of colonial India. Rajmohan’s Wife, arguably the first Indian English novel, is one of the first novels to realistically represent ‘Woman’ in the nineteenth century. Set in a newly emerging society of India, it provides an insight into the status of women, their susceptibility and dependence on men. The Home and the World, written at the height of Swadeshi movement in Bengal, presents its woman protagonist in a much progressive space. The paper closely examines these two texts and argues that women enact their agency in relational spaces which leads to the process of their ‘becoming’. The paper analyses this journey of the progress of the self, which starts with Matangini and culminates in Bimala. The paper concludes that women’s journey to emancipation is symbolic of the journey of the nation to independence.

The Rediscovery of Samuel Lyde's Lost Nuṣayrī Kitāb al-Mashyakha (Manual for Shaykhs)

2013 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
BELLA TENDLER KRIEGER
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractTheK. al-Mashyakhais a manual for Nuṣayrī shaykhs. Its significance as a window into the otherwise secret world of Nuṣayrī ritual was augmented by the role it played in the formation of Nuṣayrī studies: in 1860, it served as the basis for the first monograph on the Nuṣayrī religion, Samuel Lyde's posthumously publishedAsian Mystery. However, for over 150 years, the K. al-Mashyakha has been missing. This article announces its rediscovery in two identical manuscripts and identifies two additional works based on this text, the well-known Nuṣayrī catechism, K. Taʿlīm diyānat al-nuṣayriyya, and the recently publishedK. al-Mashyakhaissued by the Lebanese press, Dār li-ajl al-maʿrifa. In solving the mystery of its disappearance and rediscovery in two copies, this article provides new insight into the nineteenth-century Nuṣayrī world from which theK. al-Mashyakhaemerged, as well as that of the European orientalists who pioneered this field.

scholarly journals Representations of Hungary and Transylvania in John Paget’s Travelogue

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-98
Author(s):  
Borbála Bökös
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Travel Guide ◽  
Hungarian Society ◽  
English Culture ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Travel Accounts

Abstract Hungary was an important destination for British travelers in the nineteenth century, whose travel accounts provide intriguing insights into the cultural and political climate of the period. John Paget’s journey was meticulously recorded in his extensive book entitled Hungary and Transylvania (1839) that served as a travel guide for other British visitors after him. Paget, who took part in the 1848/49 War of Independence, and became a “Hungarian,” opened Europe’s eyes to the Hungarian people and their country, destroying several false myths that existed about Hungarians in Western Europe, thus attempting to shape up a more favorable picture about them. The present paper examines a few questions regarding the representation of Hungary and of Transylvania in general in the travelogue: how did Paget describe particular cities and regions, the inhabitants, as well as their everyday life? I will attempt to look at the (changing) images of Hungary and Transylvania in Paget’s writing, as well as to offer an insight into Hungarian society and culture in the nineteenth century as contrasted to English culture and politics.

scholarly journals The Materiality of English Suicide Letters, c. 1700 – c. 1850

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Ella Sbaraini
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Emotional Distress ◽  
History Of Emotions ◽  
Social Lives ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Scholars have explored eighteenth-century suicide letters from a literary perspective, examining issues of performativity and reception. However, it is fruitful to see these letters as material as well as textual objects, which were utterly embedded in people's social lives. Using thirty manuscript letters, in conjunction with other sources, this article explores the contexts in which suicide letters were written and left for others. It looks at how authors used space and other materials to convey meaning, and argues that these letters were epistolary documents usually meant for specific, known persons, rather than the press. Generally written by members of the ‘lower orders’, these letters also provide insight into the emotional writing practices of the poor, and their experiences of emotional distress. Overall, this article proposes that these neglected documents should be used to investigate the emotional and material contexts for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century suicide. It also argues that, at a time when the history of emotions has reached considerable prominence, historians must be more attentive to the experiences of the suicidal.

Experiments with Khomeini's Revolution in Kargil: Contemporary Shi‘a networks between India and West Asia

2014 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 370-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
RADHIKA GUPTA
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Local Politics ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Financial Flows ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
Religious Networks ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractShi‘i scholars from India have been a sizeable presence in seminaries in Iran and Iraq, both historically and today. Yet there is a dearth of scholarship on Shi‘i linkages between India and West Asia, with the exception of historical work on the patronage of shrine cities in Iraq by centres of Shi‘ism in India. Departing from this geographical and historical focus, this paper lends insight into contemporary religious networks between India and West Asia, using the example of the Twelver Shi‘a in Kargil, a region located on India's ‘border’ with Pakistan in the province of Kashmir. Kargili scholars travelled overland via Afghanistan or by sea from Bombay to Basra to study in seminaries in Iraq and Iran from the nineteenth century onwards. Increasing fluency in Urdu in post-colonial India enabled them to connect with Shi‘i institutions in other parts of India, which mediate religious, cultural, and financial flows from a transnational Shi‘ite realm. These networks ofreligiouslearning are not only conduits for the transmission of textual, doctrinal knowledge, but also for politico-religious ideologies that are selectively harnessed, and often exaggerated, to effect significant social and political changes in micro-locales. While local conflicts are over-determined by the evocation of transnational links, they also reflect, even if only through rhetorical and partial reproduction, doctrinal and politico-religious schisms among Shi‘i leaders in West Asia. This is illustrated by an ethnographic account of the activities undertaken and contestations provoked by the Imam Khomeini Memorial Trust in Kargil, a modernist reform movement that has selectively appropriated Khomeini's revolutionary ideologies to instigate social change and shape local politics and religious practice in Kargil.

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