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On Fertile Ground: A Natural History of Human Reproduction
Reproduction is among the most basic of human biological functions, both for our distant ancestors and for ourselves, whether we live on the plains of Africa or in North American suburbs. Our reproductive biology unites us as a species, but it has also been an important engine of our evolution. In the way our bodies function today we can see both the imprint of our formative past and implications for our future. It is the infinitely subtle and endlessly dramatic story of human reproduction and its evolutionary context that Peter T. Ellison tells in On Fertile Ground .
Ranging from the latest achievements of modern fertility clinics to the lives of subsistence farmers in the rain forests of Africa, this book offers both a remarkably broad and a minutely detailed exploration of human reproduction. Ellison, a leading pioneer in the field, combines the perspectives of anthropology, stressing the range and variation of human experience; ecology, sensitive to the two-way interactions between humans and their environments; and evolutionary biology, emphasizing a functional understanding of human reproductive biology and its role in our evolutionary history.
Whether contrasting female athletes missing their periods and male athletes using anabolic steroids with Polish farm women and hunter-gatherers in Paraguay, or exploring the intricate choreography of an implanting embryo or of a nursing mother and her child, On Fertile Ground advances a rich and deeply satisfying explanation of the mechanisms by which we reproduce and the evolutionary forces behind their design.
Ranging from the latest achievements of modern fertility clinics to the lives of subsistence farmers in the rain forests of Africa, this book offers both a remarkably broad and a minutely detailed exploration of human reproduction. Ellison, a leading pioneer in the field, combines the perspectives of anthropology, stressing the range and variation of human experience; ecology, sensitive to the two-way interactions between humans and their environments; and evolutionary biology, emphasizing a functional understanding of human reproductive biology and its role in our evolutionary history.
Whether contrasting female athletes missing their periods and male athletes using anabolic steroids with Polish farm women and hunter-gatherers in Paraguay, or exploring the intricate choreography of an implanting embryo or of a nursing mother and her child, On Fertile Ground advances a rich and deeply satisfying explanation of the mechanisms by which we reproduce and the evolutionary forces behind their design.
368 pages, Paperback
First published March 30, 2001
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112 people want to read
About the author
Peter T. Ellison
6 booksPeter T. Ellison, Ph.D., is an Evolutionary anthropologist at Harvard University.
Editor of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution.
His research interests include reproductive ecology, endrocrinology, and human evolutionary biology.
Editor of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution.
His research interests include reproductive ecology, endrocrinology, and human evolutionary biology.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 5, 2012
personal note, info about how relative metabolic load is critical in determining when a woman ovulates after birth while breastfeeding; women have shorter labors if another person is present during labor; mother's immune system suppressed for about a week after ovulation to prevent rejection of embryo as foreign body
April 14, 2022
A detailed explanation of how human fertility works (mostly in the female, but a little about males too).
Some highlights for me:
* A psychological explanation for Malthusian population theory, and why lactational amenorrhea took so long to be accepted. Basically, Malthus (the Christian cleric) was working against the Enlightenment optimism, by pointing out that some moral restraint on human reproduction is needed. Malthusian population theory specifically does not allow "naturally biological" suppression of reproduction, which is exactly what lactational amenorrhea does.
* Interpretation of testosterone level as a modulator of "reproductive effort" in males. High testosterone is not directly associated with more aggression, or more confidence, or more risk taking. Instead, it directly increases reproductive effort, which manifests differently according to context and species.
Also, reading this makes me wonder: would a marsupial human race be able to have bigger brains? Marsupialism would mean that babies can be born very prematurely, before their large heads became a problem. Moreover, it might make status to be sexy in human females as well. High-status does not quite grant much sex-appeal to human females as to human males, since high status or not, a human female still has to give her own birth. Reproductive fitness in human females is more about bodily fitness to give birth than about money and power.
But marsupial humans would not have that constraint! A queen can give many births, assigning the premature babies to surrogate mothers to carry to term.
Some highlights for me:
* A psychological explanation for Malthusian population theory, and why lactational amenorrhea took so long to be accepted. Basically, Malthus (the Christian cleric) was working against the Enlightenment optimism, by pointing out that some moral restraint on human reproduction is needed. Malthusian population theory specifically does not allow "naturally biological" suppression of reproduction, which is exactly what lactational amenorrhea does.
* Interpretation of testosterone level as a modulator of "reproductive effort" in males. High testosterone is not directly associated with more aggression, or more confidence, or more risk taking. Instead, it directly increases reproductive effort, which manifests differently according to context and species.
Also, reading this makes me wonder: would a marsupial human race be able to have bigger brains? Marsupialism would mean that babies can be born very prematurely, before their large heads became a problem. Moreover, it might make status to be sexy in human females as well. High-status does not quite grant much sex-appeal to human females as to human males, since high status or not, a human female still has to give her own birth. Reproductive fitness in human females is more about bodily fitness to give birth than about money and power.
But marsupial humans would not have that constraint! A queen can give many births, assigning the premature babies to surrogate mothers to carry to term.
March 6, 2020
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June 2, 2009
fascinating book! if you want to know possible answers to all the why's, this book if for you. (e.g., why do we hit adolescence in our teens and not earlier, why producing a baby is like swallowing a baseball, why women have limited gametes but men have millions, etc. etc.). Last chapters kind of peter out, but I thoroughly enjoyed it for the most part.
March 2, 2017
From an academic stand point, this book provides an excellent overview of the research related to reproductive ecology. I think that some of the information in this book might be of interest to the general public, especially if you are fascinated by reproduction and want to learn more about some of the evolutionary process that shape reproduction.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews