Female cosmetic coalitions

The theory of female cosmetic coalitions (FCC) represents a controversial attempt to explain the evolutionary emergence of art, ritual and symbolic culture in Homo sapiens. The theory was proposed by evolutionary anthropologists Chris Knight and Camilla Power together with archaeologist Ian Watts. Supporters of this theory contest the prevailing assumption that the earliest art was painted or engraved on external surfaces such as cave walls or rock faces. They argue instead that art is much older than previously thought and that the canvas was initially the human body. The earliest art, according to FCC, consisted of predominantly blood-red designs produced on the body for purposes of cosmetic display and resistance to unwanted sex. Female cosmetic coalitions as a conceptual approach links: Darwin's theory of evolution by natural and sexual selection research into sexual signalling by wild-living monkeys and apes the fossil record of encephalization in human evolution recent archaeological discoveries of red-ochre pigments dating back to the speciation in Africa of Homo sapiens around 250,000 years ago modern hunter-gatherer ethnography These seemingly divergent topics come together in a co-authored publication attempting to explain why the world today is populated by modern Homo sapiens instead of by the equally large-brained, previously successful Neanderthals. An article published in the journal Current Anthropology in 2016 gives an account of exhaustive archaeological testing of the FCC theory, including robust debate between specialists. Reproductive synchrony In primates, reproductive synchrony usually takes the form of conception and birth seasonality. The regulatory 'clock', in this case, is the sun's position in relation to the tilt of the earth. In nocturnal or partly nocturnal primates—for example, owl monkeys— the periodicity of the moon may also come into play. Synchrony in general is for primates an important variable determining the extent of 'paternity skew'—defined as the extent to which fertile matings can be monopolised by a fraction of the population of males.