The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex

In 1871, Charles Darwin finally turned his formidable powers of observation on the question he had long avoided: where do we come from? The result was a book that placed humans squarely in the animal kingdom, arguing that our species descended from lower forms of life through the same processes that shape all living things. But Darwin went further, proposing a second evolutionary force he called sexual selection: the competition for mates and the choices made by females that he believed had shaped human races and driven the differences between sexes. Written with the caution of a man who knew he was challenging the foundations of Victorian certainty, The Descent of Man remains one of the most consequential books ever published. It introduced ideas about human nature, competition, and desire that still reverberate in how we understand ourselves. Darwin's theories on race have been widely criticized, yet the book also reflected his deep hatred of slavery, arguing for the common ancestry of all human populations. Whatever one makes of its specific claims, this is the work that forced science to take human evolution seriously.