The researchers develop and compare two evolutionary models to evaluate the association between social stratification and female genital modification(FGMo) in a cross-cultural African sample, theorizing that social hierarchy creates competition for high-value males in which FGMo acts as a costly demonstration of paternity certainty. Although the null model outperforms the stratification model when applied to empirical data, an association between FGMo and stratification is found in the expected direction. The authors suggest that while stratification may be an important factor in the de novo origins of FGMo, spread and persistence of the practice subsequently become more heavily dependent on other selective forces.

Researchers examine ethnographic literature from Africa and Colombia and conduct interviews in 12 Colombian cities with the aim of exploring the connection between female genital modification (FGMo) in Colombia and Africa. They theorize that the trans-atlantic slave trade was the start of sociocultural transmission of FGMo pratices to Colombia, and that this will be evident based on the presence of FGMo practices and the composition and connectivity of populations.

In this article, the authors reconsider the polygyny threshold model in order to account for the "polygyny paradox." This paradox, as the authors define it, is the trend away from polygyny as societies adopt stratified agricultural economies. This is despite an increase in both the importance of material wealth and greater leaves of wealth inequality both of which would otherwise suggest increased polygyny. The authors develop a new model that does account for this paradox.

Using data on 25 ethnolinguistic groups in the Austronesian language family, this study asks: does cooperation in games vary with socio-ecological differences across cultural groups? The authors suggest that cultural groups that cooperate in subsistence, tend to have intergroup conflict and less intragroup conflict, and are less socially stratified are more likely to play cooperative games compared to other groups. While the results support the first three hypotheses, there is insufficient data to support the fourth. The authors conclude that games serve as training ground for group norms and values.

This article is a quantitative analysis of 592 participants from 8 societies. The study examines a number of theories about what predicts moralistic religions, including life history theory. Findings suggest that there is no evident relationship between these life history predictions and the religious beliefs regarding moralism.

In this study, the authors inspect the relationship between religion, morality, and cooperation by examining the extent to which people associate their deities with moral concern. Using data from 2,228 individuals in 15 different field sites, they find that on average, people tend to ascribe at least some moral concern to their deities, and this effect is stable even after controlling for the influence of explicitly moralistic deities that these societies also worship. The authors also find that ratings of moral concern are not necessarily very high, even for deities that are typically considered to be moralistic, and that there is individual-level variation in the degree of moral concern attributed to deities. In addition, there is an individual-level correlation between how morally interested two selected deities are conceived to be and that being male or more educated decreases the likelihood of associating deities with moral concern. These findings challenge the longstanding belief that belief in moralistic deities is unique to certain societies or religions and instead suggest that the association between deities and moral concern is more widespread and variable, and suggest that the moral character of gods may be tied to cooperation within societies.

In this article researchers created a model to answer the question "What is a typical human life history of foraging skill?" While the immediate goal of this study was to create a model focused on age and relative skill, the larger purpose was to draw more clarity around the trajectory of human foraging skill over time. Researchers used data on hunting returns from 40 different study sites from around the world (Table 1) in order to assess the success of an expedition. While the model created here does not draw conclusions as to the absolute levels of production within or between societies, it can inform cross-cultural comparisons of relative skill at different stages of life. In conclusion, researchers found that the average hunter peaks at 33 years old, and by age 18, has 89% maximum skill (with the range of maximum skill being from ages 24-25). This skill was also found to decline slowly, such that it falls below 89% maximum after age 56. In terms of cross-cultural findings, the model found that cross-cultural variation is evident in the rate at which hunters develop peak skill, (meaning that within sites, the rate at which hunters develop skill is relatively homogeneous compared to the variation that distinguishes young hunters in different study sites), and individual hunters develop physical and cognitive abilities in concert, resulting in high hunting success by their late 20s and early 30s. In order to run the model, this study used the Hamiltonian Monte Carlo algorithm (in the Rstan package) for the sampling, and a Cobb-Douglas production function to express the observable foraging returns.