William Irons | Evolutionary Anthropologist

I am an evolutionary anthropologist who did an ethnography and demographic study in northern Iran and who explored my Iranian data in terms of evolutionary theory (behavioral ecology, sociobiology, evolutionary psychology). I have also developed theoretical ideas relevant to human behavioral ecology. I began my career with research on the Yomut Turkmen of northern Iran starting with an ethnography of a pastoral Yomut community in the 1965-67 and later moving on to a demographic study of the Yomut in 1973-74. I used my ethnographic and demographic data to formulate and test several evolutionary hypotheses. Also I developed some more general theoretical idea such as the cultural-and-biological-success hypothesis. I played a role in the organization of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) in 1988 and organized its first meeting at Northwestern University in 1989. In 2001 – 2003 I served as President of HBES. I also spearheaded the formation of the Evolutionary Anthropology Society (EAS) as a section of the American Anthropological Association and served as its first president 2004 – 2005.