Ruth Mace is Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at the University College London. She studies the evolution of life history, culture, language, and the origins of kinship and social systems. In China she studies the evolutionary ecology of matriliny, in India the evolutionary ecology of pro-social norms and family structure, and in the UK the parental investment and child development.
Contents lecture
In her lecture Professor Ruth Mace will discuss some of her work on matriliny in China. From an evolutionary perspective, matriliny presents a puzzle because men in matrilineal societies transmit wealth to their sisters’ sons, to whom they are only half as related as to their own sons. It has been argued that such systems would only maximise fitness under unrealistically high levels of paternity uncertainty. In her lecture Ruth Mace will discuss some of these issues and argues that matriliny can arise from daughter biased investment by parents and/or grandparents.
Registration
Send an e-mail by 2 October to register for this free public lecture:
info@leydenacademy.nl.