Melvin Konner

Melvin Konner is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology at Emory University. His PhD and MD are from Harvard. He did fieldwork for two years among !Kung San (Bushman) hunter-gatherers. His ten books include The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit (Holt Paperbacks, 2003); Why the Reckless Survive and Other Secrets of Human Nature (Viking Adult, 1990); and The Evolution of Childhood: Relationships, Emotion, Mind (Belknap Press, 2011). He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has written for Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, Nature, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, Newsweek, and other publications.

Selected articles and book chapters include: 

• Konner and C. Worthman, "Nursing frequency, gonadal function and birth spacing among !Kung hunter-gatherers," Science 207:788-90, 1980
• Eaton, S.B. and Konner. "Paleolithic nutrition," New Engl. J. Med. 312:283, 1985
• Brown, P. and Konner. "An anthropological perspective on obesity," Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 499:29, 1987
• Worthman, C.M. and Konner. "Testosterone levels change with subsistence hunting in !Kung San men," Psychoneuroendocrinol. 12(6):449, 1987
• Barr, R.G., Konner, M., Bakeman, R., and Adamson, L. "Crying in !Kung San infants," Devel. Med. Child Neurol. 33:601, 1991
• "Universals of behavioral development in relation to brain myelination," in K. Gibson and A. Petersen (eds.), Brain Maturation and Cognitive Development, 1991
• Eaton, S.B. and eight others. "Women's cancers in evolutionary perspective," Quart. Rev. Biol., September, 1994
• "Anthropology and psychiatry," in Kaplan, HI and Sadock, BJ (eds.) Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, Williams & Wilkins, 1995
• "Darwin's Truth, Jefferson's Vision: Sociobiology and the Politics of Human Nature," The American Prospect 45: 30-38, 1999
• “Human Nature: Seeking Universals,” invited essay, Nature 415:121, January 10, 2002
• “Bridging Our Differences,” Newsweek, June 16, 2003, invited essay on how men and women process emotion
• “Hunter-Gatherer Childhood: The !Kung and Others,” in B. S. Hewlett and M. E. Lamb, eds., Hunter-Gatherer Childhood, Cambridge University Press, 2005
• “Attachment,” invited essay, Nature 429:705, June 17, 2004
• “Trauma, Resilience, and Adaptation,” in L. J. Kirmayer, R. Lemelson, and M. Barad, eds., Understanding Trauma, Cambridge University Press, 2007
• “Evolutionary Foundations of Cultural Psychology,” in S. Kitayama and D. Cohen, eds., Handbook of Cultural Psychology (New York, The Guilford Press, 2007)
• A. C. Kruger and Konner, “Who Responds to Crying? Maternal and Allocare among the !Kung,” Human Nature 21(3):309-329, 2010
• Konner and S. B. Eaton, “Paleolithic Nutrition: Twenty-Five Years Later,” Nutrition in Clinical Practice 25(6):594-602, 2010.