Robert Leonard Carneiro

American Museum of Natural History, New York, New York ~Curator Emeritus. Leading theorist of cultural evolution. Work among the Kuikuru, Amahuaca, and Yanomamo Indians of South America, combined with ethnohistoric research on the Cauca Valley of Colombia, has led to influential ideas on the organization of village societies and chiefly societies. Generated a series of evolutionary models and specified the mechanisms and variables involved. Pioneer in applying scale analysis to cultural evolution. Studied the effect of population size on village fissioning and increased complexity. Demonstrated the role of warfare and environmental circumscription in the origins of the state. The American Behavioral Scientist devoted an issue to papers stimulated by his theory of state formation. Most recent books include The Muse of History and the Science of Culture(2000), Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology (2003), and The Evolution of the Human Mind: From Supernaturalism to Naturalism-An Anthropological Perspective (2010).~