Resumen de Evolutionary and life history insights into masculinity and warfare: opportunities and limitations
In this paper I present, evaluate, and discuss evidence that evolutionary and life history theory can inform our understanding of violence and warfare as well as how these human challenges are influenced by the evolution of male life histories and our perceptions of masculinity. While other anthropological perspectives have interrogated the evolution of war from human and comparative contexts, few have addressed the influence of male life history variables such as age-specific mortality and reproductive constraints on the emergence and conduct of war. Other evolutionary factors worthy of consideration include sexual dimorphism, phenotypic plasticity, and paternity uncertainty. I initially present a contextual examination of the evolutionary science that underlies the engagement of human males with violence and warfare, casting particular attention on the opportunities and constraints of deploying evolutionary and life history theory. I later incorporate other variables including human variation, behavioral endocrinology, and comparative perspectives. In the latter half of this paper I suggest a novel perspective for understanding males, war, and violence by drawing on male-specific patterns of mortality, paternity uncertainty, and the evolution of male aging. While evolutionary and life history theory can provide an informative perspective to understand how males contribute to violence and warfare, there are limitations that set the stage for intellectual partnership opportunities with cultural anthropologists, psychologists, and other social scientists.
