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SUMMARY:Why be a monk?  -  Professor Ruth Mace\, UCL
DTSTART:20231127T160000Z
DTEND:20231127T173000Z
UID:TALK205012@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Simon Carrignon
DESCRIPTION:Here we examine the evolution of religious celibacy from an ev
 olutionary perspective. We use this issue to address the wider question of
  whether fitness considerations underly the evolution of cultural traits. 
 We use the tools from behavioural ecology. We model how sending a child to
  the monastery\, to live a celibate life\, could evolve as a mechanism to 
 enhance inclusive fitness. If close kin benefit from the decision and the 
 decision is made by parents rather than the boy himself\, then sending mor
 e than a negligible proportion of sons to the monastery to live as monks c
 an be favoured by selection. We test the model with demographic data from 
 Western China\, where a significant number of young boys were sent to live
  as monks in Tibetan monasteries. We show that the decision to send a son 
 to monastery was not costly to the parents of monks in terms of inclusive 
 fitness and thus can evolve by kin selection. Thus monasteries represents 
 an example of a complex institution that may have arisen due to kin-select
 ed benefits.
LOCATION:Henry Welcome Building
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