This article examines possible environmental predictors of ethnic diversity around the world. Results suggest that global ethnic diversity is associated with latitude, habitat diversity, pathogen stress, and climate.

This article examines possible environmental predictors of ethnic diversity around the world. Results suggest that global ethnic diversity is associated with latitude, habitat diversity, pathogen stress, and climate.

This study attempted to replicate earlier findings regarding population structure and teen pregnancy rates. Findings support the previous predictions that sex ratio, economic development, and latitude are all inversely related to teen birth rates.

The researchers test the relationship between toolkit complexity and diversity as defined by Oswalt (1973) and environmental and demographic variables. Neither population size nor risk of resource failure predict toolkit characteristics among all groups in the sample. However, population size is significantly positively correlated with toolkit diversity and complexity among food-producers, whereas environmental factors indicating risk of resource failure are significantly positively correlated among hunter-gatherers. This leads the researchers to suggest that food-producers' effectiveness at niche construction is a result of their large population size, which thus has a larger effect on toolkit composition than does environmental risk relative to hunter-gatherers.

The authors test the relationship between ethnolinguistic area and various environmental variables in a cross-cultural sample of hunter-gatherer, pastoral, and agricultural subsistence groups in order to evaluate various hypotheses surrounding the geographic and ecological origins of cultural diversity. They propose that societies which adopted agriculture at the beginning of the Holocene were less directly affected by climate which, combined with the effect of increasing political and cultural complexity, allowed coordination and homogenization of ethnolinguistic groups over a broader swathe of territory.

Authors use genealogical data to investigate pair bond stability and reproductive skew across a sample of 80 small-scale societies. Results suggest that male reproductive skew and pair-bond stability are independent sources of cross-cultural variation in human mating patterns.

There is considerable variation both within and across societies in attitudes towards female employment outside of the household. In some societies, the dominant belief is that women should have equal opportunity to work outside the home, while in others women are strongly discouraged from working outside of the domestic sphere. Here the authors use pre-industrial ethnographic data and contemporary observations of gender inequality to test the hypothesis that cultural attitudes regarding the appropriateness of women working outside of the household are rooted in the ancestral adoption of plough cultivation. Contemporary measures of gender inequality assess variation across countries, ethnic groups, and individuals.

There is considerable variation both within and across societies in attitudes towards female employment outside of the household. In some societies, the dominant belief is that women should have equal opportunity to work outside the home, while in others women are strongly discouraged from working outside of the domestic sphere. Here the authors use pre-industrial ethnographic data and contemporary observations of gender inequality to test the hypothesis that cultural attitudes regarding the appropriateness of women working outside of the household are rooted in the ancestral adoption of plough cultivation. Contemporary measures of gender inequality assess variation across countries, ethnic groups, and individuals.

There is considerable variation both within and across societies in attitudes towards female employment outside of the household. In some societies, the dominant belief is that women should have equal opportunity to work outside the home, while in others women are strongly discouraged from working outside of the domestic sphere. Here the authors use pre-industrial ethnographic data and contemporary observations of gender inequality to test the hypothesis that cultural attitudes regarding the appropriateness of women working outside of the household are rooted in the ancestral adoption of plough cultivation. Contemporary measures of gender inequality assess variation across countries, ethnic groups, and individuals.

The history and diversity of recordkeeping worldwide is presented in connection with the effect of recordkeeping on social and economic development.