HumanWay : a wider perspective on human puzzles – HumanWay

Humans display traits challenging evolutionary thinking, i.e. traits associated with lower reproductive success through reduced fertility and/or longevity, such as male homosexual preference. While the fruitful evolutionary approach of human behaviour has recently led to significant advances, why and how those Darwinian puzzles have evolved and are maintained remains unsolved. The aim of the HumanWay project is to offer a new interdisciplinary framework in which understanding the high prevalence of such paradoxical behaviour will be made possible by developing and empirically testing specific theoretical predictions. For the particular case of menopause and male homosexual preference, predictions will be tested in the light of alternative evolutionary hypotheses, using cross-cultural data, detailed data from several study sites, and experimental data. Overall, integrating the complexity of social practices in biological models will open new perspectives on the evolution of menopause and male homosexual preference, and potentially other apparently paradoxical behaviour. HumanWay is an ambitious project that lies at the interface of biology and specific human traits, and the results will have strong implications to (1) understand the interaction between biological processes and cultural traits and (2) initiate an interdisciplinary brainstorming at the crossroad between evolutionary biology and anthropology/human sciences.