Zach Garfield

⚠️ New Paper! 📣 Egalitarianism has been tied to hunter-gatherer subsistence - but is that justified? In synthesising 30 expert commentaries, we argue that the processes underwriting hunter-gatherer egalitarianism appear in most all human societies; though their efficacy is context dependent.

Hey fieldworkers! Do you need documentation (health & safety protocols, codes of conduct, feedback forms)? Do you have documentation that you think could help others do better fieldwork, but don’t know where to share it? We’ve got you covered in our new Fieldwork Repo! osf.io/4h7bu/overview

"...contemporary scientific systems progressively constrain high-risk and conceptually innovative research while being increasingly structured around short funding cycles, productivity-based evaluation criteria and risk-averse frameworks..." www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New preprint! 💙 Together with @amandinevisine.bsky.social, we observed that BaYaka hunter-gatherer women and girls flexibly alternate between childcare and subsistence responsibilities during foraging trips, a pattern we call “relay cooperation” osf.io/preprints/so...

still red

Thanks to @timmiller.bsky.social & @thebulwark.com for triggering this one: What Many People Get Wrong About Tribalism | Psychology Today www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ecol...

What I want students to take from my new Evolution & Human Behavior course: an evolutionary lens gets you understandings and questions you wouldn't reach otherwise. There's grandeur in this view of life. https://zhgarfield.com/blog/evolution-and-human-behavior

I’m now @grinnellcollege.bsky.social in Anthropology where I’ll be offering a series of new courses on human #evolutionary social #science & #biologicalanthropology and launching a new lab to support student research and expand my research program. 🧪 #HBES 🌾💎 #Grinnell

How many languages have existed over the Holocene—and what does that reveal about the design space of languages and cultures? Now out in @science.org www.science.org/eprint/QDZNY....

Why do societies rely on rigid moral rules? Don't lie. Keep your promises. Don't steal. We all recognize there are good reasons to make exceptions. So why are moral rules so often categorical? Our new paper proposes an answer. 🧵

1. Attempted cancellations of prominent scholars as proxy wars on ideas one doesn't like: the case of Margaret Mead...and a mea culpa 🧪 #AcademicSky

Autoposted from https://www.zhgarfield.com/outreach/. https://zhgarfield.com/blog/science-and-social-media

What things are often missed out? Risk! Life history! Individual variation! Inequality! @psmaldino.bsky.social Speaking my language in his talk on Development of Risk Behaviours and thier Cultural Transmission #CES2026 @ces2026.bsky.social

Day 3 of the Cultural Evolution Society Conference (CES) 2026 is in full swing at the UM6P Rabat campus! After a great start 2 days ago, Africa Institute for Research in Economics and Social Sciences (AIRES) and the SCI continue to host this incredible gathering of minds. #CES2026 #UM6P

Joe Henrich emphasizing the importance of formal models at #CES2026

Rob Boyd tracing the origins of Cultural Evolution as a field #CES2026

#CES2026 is over - amazing days exploring new frontiers in animal culture and archaeology with so many talented people. Grateful to be in Rabat and happy to have presented my poster "Mapping Cultural Transmission in Human and Non-Human Primates" Thanks everyone - looking forward to the next CES✨

What a week! I had a wonderful time at #CES2026 and I'm very thankful for the opportunity to hang out with such amazing people and researchers, learn about their work and present my own. 🧬 I leave Morocco the head full of ideas, the heart full of friendship (and the stomach full of tajine) 🙌🏻

Just had a fantastic time at @ces2026.bsky.social ! I got to present some of my PhD work and to engage in stimulating discussions about the scope of chimpanzee social learning and their cultural potential 🙌 Excited to come back in 2028 ✨ A huge thanks to the organizers! #CES2026

Final day of #HBES2026! 🌍 Parallel sessions kick off at 9:00, followed by Martin Daly’s lunch panel on the history of HBES, the Postdoctoral Investigator Award finalists, and our closing keynote at 15:05: Simon Baron-Cohen on “The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention.”

HBES 2026 | Day 2 at UM6P Rabat 📍 The 37th Annual Human Behavior and Evolution Society Conference continues with a day full of exchanges and global perspectives

Learn more about HBES2026: airess.fgses-um6p.ma/hbes2026

Joint #HBES2026 / #CES2026 plenary 🎤 Hugo Mercier on "The evolution of reason and the cultural evolution of reasons." With Dan Sperber, he’s argued reason isn’t a fix-everything mechanism — it’s a social one. A thread 🧵

Great times with the EC at #HBES2026 in Morocco! 🇲🇦

Plenary 1 at #HBES2026 🎤 Brooke Scelza on “More Than Our Differences: Moving beyond dichotomies in the study of human mating.” Drawing on 15 years with the Himba of NW Namibia, she pushed us to broaden how we frame sexual selection. A thread 🧵

What's really clear from today's #CES2026 - #HBES2026 panel is how much we've come to work together, across the evolutionary social & behavioral sciences. Monique Borgerhoff Mulder sums it up: "The gaps between evolutionary psychology, human behavior ecology, & cultural evolution have narrowed"

A strong start to the conference, bringing together scholars and researchers from diverse disciplines to exchange ideas and advance the field.

Learn more about the conference agenda, discover our key speakers, and explore the highlights of Day 2 Agenda: airess.fgses-um6p.ma/ces2026 #CES2026

📢IMPORTANT NOTICE Participants are required to bring their passport with them to access the campus. Please do not forget it, as it is mandatory for entry. We are very excited to welcome you!

📢IMPORTANT NOTICE Participants are required to bring their passport with them to access the campus. Please do not forget it, as it is mandatory for entry. We are very excited to welcome you!

🚨FULLY FUNDED PHD POSITION!🚨 If you are interested in trying to answer the question of "How did climate shape the movements, interactions, and evolution of hominin populations?" Come join my lab at @humanorigins.bsky.social 🧬🧪 deadline 7th of June ⬇️ uni-tuebingen.de/universitaet...

⭐️ to any @hbes2026.bsky.social or @ces2026.bsky.social attendees traveling across #Morocco who manage to spot our logo inspirations IRL #CESRabat #HBES2026

Thanks @unlincoln.bsky.social & @unlcas.bsky.social for promoting our work! sgis.unl.edu/news/lincoln...

Fitting to see this out w/ @hbes2026.bsky.social around the corner. @rayhames.bsky.social, last year's #HBES Lifetime Achievement winner, gave us a brief history of the society. Martin Daly will build on it with a panel, The History & Prehistory of HBES See all you *The Podcast* talking heads soon

Join us in Barcelona for a postdoc! We are looking for candidates with a strong NLP/ML/AI background and an interest in linguistic diversity and human and machine cognition: dub.sh/blasi_nlp_po...

Thanks (in advance!) to the organizers of @ces2026.bsky.social and @hbes2026.bsky.social for hosting these two conferences in Morocco, thus giving me (and many others) the excuse to visit this magical country and continent (for the first time!) Shukran bezzaf. See you soon in Rabat.

@lfanpsych.bsky.social set up this participant-driven ride share sheet for @hbes2026.bsky.social attendees arriving to the Rabat airport for #HBES2026 This is not managed by the local organizers or @humbehevosoc.bsky.social, but we're happy to spread the word. 

docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Colleagues and I happy for any feedback. 🧪 #HBES Third-party punishment is common across human societies but varies with socioecology osf.io/preprints/ps...

I'll be presenting this work at the Cultural Evolution Society (CES) 2026 Conference in Rabat, Morocco (airess.fgses-um6p.ma/ces2026) on May 13. If you attend the conference and are interested in this, let's talk!

How do filmmakers portray POWER? Pretty closely to how evolutionary social scientists would tell them to. Here's a great video on power in film: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaIF... ... ...which echoed this paper beautifully: Durkee et al. PNAS (2020) www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1... Science + art 🎨

There is a fully-funded PhD position at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology to pursue dissertation research among the Mayangna of Nicaragua, expanding a longitudinal study of subsistence strategies and behavioral ecology. Please share the posting! www.eva.mpg.de/career/posit...

Q: How’s the end of the semester going? A: 🎾 @weratedogs.com