Contributor Guidelines

Hominid Post publishes rigorous, accessible writing about human evolution, human behavioral ecology, evolutionary anthropology, archaeology, cultural evolution, primatology, and related fields.

We welcome contributions from researchers, graduate students, field practitioners, science writers, and informed professionals whose work can help readers understand human behavior without reducing it to slogans, biological determinism, or moral judgment.

Our standard is simple: write clearly, represent the evidence fairly, disclose what remains uncertain, and treat the people being discussed as human beings rather than illustrations of a theory.

What we publish

Hominid Post accepts several types of contributions.

Feature articles

Length: approximately 1,200 to 2,000 words.

Features examine a behavioral, evolutionary, archaeological, or cultural question in depth. They should open with a clear puzzle, consider competing explanations, and connect theory to evidence from real populations, historical settings, or comparative research.

Theory-to-life explainers

Length: approximately 900 to 1,500 words.

These articles explain a scientific concept and show how it can help readers understand familiar behavior.

Possible subjects include:

·Kin selection
·Reciprocal altruism
·Costly signaling
·Cultural transmission
·Life history theory
·Parental investment
·Coalition formation
·Status competition
·Mate choice
·Cooperation
·Risk management
·Human social learning

The goal is to make the theory understandable without pretending that it explains every case.

Field notes

Length: approximately 700 to 1,000 words.

Field notes focus on a place, population, archaeological site, research method, observation, or practical issue in fieldwork.

They should provide enough ecological, historical, and social context to prevent readers from treating one case as representative of all humans.

Critiques and myth-busting articles

Length: approximately 900 to 1,400 words.

These pieces examine claims that are widely repeated but scientifically weak, exaggerated, outdated, or poorly understood.

A critique should explain:

·What the claim says
·Why it became persuasive
·What evidence supports it
·What evidence weakens it
·What a more defensible conclusion would be

We do not publish criticism based primarily on ridicule, personal attacks, or ideological disagreement.

Essays and commentary

Length: normally 800 to 1,500 words.

Commentary may advance an interpretation or connect anthropology to a current social issue.

Opinion must be clearly identified and supported by accurate factual claims. A contributor may argue for a position, but should represent credible competing evidence fairly.

Reviews

We may publish reviews of books, documentaries, exhibitions, public scholarship, databases, and major research programs.

Reviews should evaluate the quality of the evidence, the usefulness of the work, its contribution to the field, and its limitations.

A summary alone is not a review.

What we are looking for

Strong Hominid Post submissions usually begin with a behavioral or historical puzzle.

Examples include:

·Why do people cooperate generously in one setting and compete aggressively in another?
·Why does a ritual survive after its original conditions have changed?
·Why do some resources become political tools rather than simple economic goods?
·How do institutions alter the incentives surrounding family, status, or reproduction?
·Why does the same behavior produce different outcomes across different ecologies?
·What evidence would distinguish an evolved adaptation from a cultural byproduct?

The best submissions turn a messy question into a clear analytical structure without pretending that human behavior has one universal cause.

Required analytical approach

Articles that explain behavior should normally consider at least two credible hypotheses.

These may include:

·Ecological incentives
·Kinship
·Reciprocity
·Reputation
·Costly signaling
·Status competition
·Coalition building
·Parental investment
·Sexual selection
·Developmental plasticity
·Cultural transmission
·Institutional incentives
·Historical contingency
·Measurement error
·Confounding
·Reverse causality

The contributor should explain what predictions follow from each hypothesis and what evidence could distinguish among them.

Several explanations may operate at the same time. Contributors should avoid forcing a single cause when the evidence supports a layered account.

Evidence, interpretation, and speculation

Contributors must distinguish among three levels of claim.

Evidence

Evidence includes documented observations, data, experiments, fieldwork, archaeological findings, comparative research, historical records, and other verifiable sources.

Interpretation

Interpretation explains what the evidence may mean.

Interpretations should be proportionate to the strength and limits of the evidence.

Speculation

Speculation includes plausible ideas that have not yet been adequately tested.

Speculation is welcome when clearly labeled and connected to testable predictions. It should not be written as established fact.

Scientific standards

Submissions must comply with the Hominid Post Editorial Standards and Sources and Citation Policy.

Contributors must:

·Use real and traceable sources
·Represent studies accurately
·Cite important scientific and historical claims
·Distinguish correlation from causation
·Identify preliminary or disputed findings
·Avoid generalizing from narrow samples without qualification
·Distinguish animal research from human evidence
·State when a finding comes from a laboratory rather than a natural setting
·Include meaningful limitations
·Address credible alternative explanations
·Check whether heavily relied-upon studies have been corrected, challenged, or retracted

A reference list cannot compensate for weak reasoning. Every citation should support the specific claim associated with it.

Preferred sources

Contributors should prioritize:

1.Peer-reviewed original research
2.Systematic reviews and meta-analyses
3.Scholarly books from reputable academic presses
4.Strong archaeological, historical, and ethnographic syntheses
5.Government, university, museum, and scientific-institution sources
6.Reputable journalism for recent events and public controversies

Preprints, conference papers, working papers, dissertations, documentaries, popular books, and expert commentary may be used with appropriate qualification.

Artificial intelligence output is not a source.

Citations and references

Hominid Post generally uses parenthetical author-date citations.

Example:

Cooperation can produce different benefits depending on ecology, kinship, reputation, and the stability of social relationships (Author, year).

Each submission should include a References and Further Reading section in American Psychological Association (APA) style.

References should contain enough information for an editor and reader to locate the source.

When available, include a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), publisher page, PubMed record, institutional repository, or stable archive link.

Contributors are responsible for checking:

·Author names
·Publication dates
·Article and book titles
·Journal and publisher information
·Links and Digital Object Identifiers
·Quotation accuracy
·Retraction or correction status
·Whether the cited source supports the claim

Writing for a broad audience

Hominid Post serves both academically trained readers and the general public.

Contributors should explain complex ideas without weakening them.

Define technical terms

Define specialized language when it first appears.

When using an abbreviation, write the full term first, followed by the abbreviation in parentheses.

Example:

Human behavioral ecology (HBE) examines how people adjust behavior to local costs, benefits, and constraints.

Use concrete examples

An example can make a theory understandable, but it should not be treated as proof.

Explain where the analogy works and where it breaks.

Keep claims proportional

Avoid words such as:

·Proves
·Hardwired
·Inevitable
·Universal
·Programmed
·Designed for
·Scientific fact

These terms may occasionally be appropriate, but they usually require stronger evidence than popular writing provides.

Avoid unnecessary jargon

Technical language should add precision. It should not be used to make an argument sound more authoritative.

Standard article structure

Most submissions should include the following elements.

Title

The title should be accurate, specific, and understandable.

Avoid headlines that promise a complete explanation of human nature or exaggerate one study.

Lede

Open with a behavioral puzzle, observation, scene, contradiction, or question.

The opening should give readers a reason to continue without using manufactured suspense.

Main sections

Use three to six descriptive subheadings.

Each section should advance the analysis rather than restate the introduction.

Competing hypotheses or key terms

Include one boxed section presenting either:

·Important terms readers need to understand, or
·The leading competing explanations for the behavior being examined

What would change my mind?

Include two to five points describing evidence that would weaken, revise, or overturn the article's main interpretation.

This section should identify actual tests, data, or observations rather than vague statements about needing more research.

Key takeaways

End with three to six concise takeaways.

These should summarize the article without overstating certainty.

References and further reading

Include five to twelve strong sources for most general-audience articles.

Longer or more technical contributions may require more.

Evolutionary explanations

Contributors should take special care when claiming that a behavior is an adaptation.

A serious adaptation claim should address:

·The proposed selection pressure
·The relevant ecology
·How the behavior could have affected survival or reproduction
·Whether meaningful heritable variation could have existed
·Whether the mechanism produces testable predictions
·Whether the behavior could instead be a byproduct, cultural adaptation, developmental response, constraint, or statistical artifact

A plausible story is the beginning of an evolutionary hypothesis, not the completion of one.

Proximate and ultimate explanations

When relevant, distinguish between proximate and ultimate questions.

A proximate explanation addresses immediate mechanisms such as:

·Hormones
·Development
·Cognition
·Emotion
·Learning
·Social experience

An ultimate explanation addresses evolutionary history or possible fitness consequences.

These explanations can complement one another. Contributors should not use one level to dismiss the other.

Culture and institutions

Culture should be treated as a causal system.

Norms, markets, laws, technologies, religions, political structures, and prestige systems can alter behavior quickly. They influence which strategies are rewarded, punished, copied, or abandoned.

Contributors should avoid treating culture as decoration placed on top of biology.

Where appropriate, consider gene-culture coevolution, cultural transmission, institutional enforcement, and historical path dependence.

Human variation and determinism

Hominid Post does not publish group-essentialist claims.

Contributors should not treat race, sex, ethnicity, religion, nationality, or culture as biologically uniform categories.

When discussing group averages, explain:

·Variation within groups
·Overlap between groups
·Effect size
·Sample limitations
·Measurement choices
·Developmental and cultural influences
·Whether the evidence applies to individuals

Evolutionary explanation must never be used to assign moral worth, social rank, intelligence, criminality, or political entitlement to a population.

Sensitive subjects

Submissions about violence, warfare, race, intelligence, religion, sexuality, reproduction, mental health, colonialism, or political conflict receive additional review.

Contributors should:

·Avoid dehumanizing language
·Avoid collective moral judgment
·Separate ancestry from political identity
·Distinguish description from endorsement
·Recognize internal diversity
·Avoid presenting current populations as unchanged remnants of the past
·Address historical and institutional context
·Avoid using biology to legitimize hierarchy, exclusion, or coercion

Hominid Post will not publish eugenic arguments, racial supremacy claims, biological caste theories, or content that denies the dignity of a population.

Ethnographic responsibility

Ethnographic populations should not be used as exotic examples detached from history.

Contributors should identify, where relevant:

·Location
·Time period
·Subsistence ecology
·Political conditions
·Market integration
·Colonial or state influence
·Research methods
·Limits of the comparison

No living population should be described as primitive, frozen in time, or directly equivalent to ancestral humans.

Communities should be named using respectful and current terminology.

Archaeology and reconstruction

Archaeological writing should distinguish among:

·Excavated evidence
·Laboratory analysis
·Dating estimates
·Reconstruction
·Scholarly interpretation
·Public speculation

When relevant, identify the material studied, the dating method, the estimated range, and the uncertainty.

Illustrations and reconstructions should not be treated as direct evidence.

Genetics and ancestry

Genetic research must be presented carefully.

Contributors should distinguish genetic ancestry from:

·Culture
·Language
·Religion
·Nationality
·Race
·Citizenship
·Political identity
·Territorial entitlement

Ancient DNA and modern population genetics are powerful tools, but they do not establish cultural purity, exclusive historical ownership, or moral rights.

Health, neuroscience, and psychology

Articles involving medicine, neuroscience, or mental health should distinguish between population-level evidence and individual diagnosis.

Neuroimaging studies require particular care.

Activity in a brain region does not, by itself, prove that the region causes a complex behavior or that the behavior is biologically fixed.

Educational content should not be written as individualized medical or psychological advice.

Originality

Submissions must be original.

Contributors may not submit:

·Plagiarized material
·Close paraphrases without citation
·Fabricated research
·Invented quotations
·AI-generated citations
·Previously published work presented as new
·Material under exclusive consideration elsewhere without disclosure

If a submission adapts a dissertation, lecture, newsletter, report, or previously published article, disclose that history before publication.

Artificial intelligence tools

Contributors may use artificial intelligence tools for limited support, including:

·Brainstorming
·Outlining
·Language editing
·Transcription
·Translation assistance
·Research organization

The contributor remains responsible for every sentence, citation, fact, and conclusion.

Artificial intelligence may not be used to:

·Invent sources
·Generate quotations presented as real
·Fabricate data
·Produce unverifiable claims
·Paraphrase sources in a misleading way
·Conceal plagiarism
·Generate a final article without meaningful human review

Substantial automated assistance should be disclosed to the editor.

Images, charts, and media

Contributors must have the right to submit any image, chart, table, map, audio, or video included with the article.

Provide:

·Creator or rights holder
·Source
·Permission status
·Required credit
·Caption
·Alt text when available
·Any relevant disclosure of editing or artificial generation

AI-generated or substantially altered images must be identified.

Charts must accurately represent the data and should include the source, units, scale, and relevant limitations.

Conflicts of interest

Contributors must disclose relationships that could reasonably influence, or appear to influence, their judgment.

These may include:

·Employment
·Consulting
·Board service
·Grants
·Investments
·Paid speaking
·Political activity
·Advocacy roles
·Commercial partnerships
·Ownership of a product or company discussed
·Personal or professional relationships with people or organizations covered

Disclosure does not automatically disqualify a contributor.

Failure to disclose a material conflict may lead to correction, withdrawal, or retraction.

Contributor biography

Include a biography of approximately 50 to 100 words.

The biography may include:

·Current role
·Institutional affiliation
·Relevant academic or professional background
·Research interests
·Selected publications or field experience
·Personal website or professional profile

Credentials must be accurate and current.

Do not imply clinical, academic, or scientific qualifications that you do not hold.

Pitching an article

A pitch should be concise and should include:

·Proposed title
·Central question
·Why the subject matters
·Main argument or competing hypotheses
·Evidence or sources you expect to use
·Proposed article type
·Estimated word count
·Relevant qualifications or experience
·Disclosure of conflicts or commercial relationships
·Whether the idea or article has appeared elsewhere

A strong pitch usually fits within 250 to 400 words.

A completed draft may also be submitted, but acceptance is not guaranteed.

To submit a pitch or draft, contact [email protected].

Editorial review process

Accepted submissions may undergo:

·Structural editing
·Scientific review
·Citation verification
·Fact-checking
·Sensitivity review
·Legal or compliance review
·Headline editing
·Search optimization
·Copyediting

Editors may request:

·Better evidence
·Additional competing explanations
·Narrower claims
·Removal of unsupported language
·Disclosure of conflicts
·Clarification of methods
·Updated sources
·Changes to headlines or images

Editorial review is collaborative, but Hominid Post retains final authority over publication, labeling, headlines, formatting, and compliance with site standards.

Routine editorial review should not be described as academic peer review.

Author review

Contributors may review substantive edits before publication.

Minor changes involving grammar, formatting, style, metadata, or search presentation may be made without separate approval when they do not change meaning.

Contributors should respond to editorial questions directly and provide source support when requested.

Failure to resolve material accuracy or sourcing concerns may result in rejection.

Corrections after publication

Contributors are expected to cooperate with correction requests.

When a meaningful error is identified, the contributor should help verify the issue and provide corrected language or sourcing.

Hominid Post retains the authority to correct, update, annotate, withdraw, or retract published content under its Corrections and Updates Policy.

An author's disagreement with a correction does not prevent the publication from protecting the accuracy of the record.

Rights and publication terms

Specific rights, licensing, payment, exclusivity, and republication terms should be confirmed in writing before publication.

Unless otherwise agreed:

·The contributor confirms that the work is original
·The contributor confirms that publication does not violate another agreement
·Hominid Post may edit the article for accuracy, clarity, style, formatting, and search presentation
·Hominid Post may promote the article through newsletters, social media, syndication excerpts, and other distribution channels
·Material changes to the article's central meaning should be discussed with the contributor when practical
·Third-party materials remain subject to their original rights and licenses

Contributors should not assume that submission guarantees payment or publication.

Any compensation will be agreed upon before publication.

Reasons a submission may be declined

Hominid Post may decline a submission when it:

·Falls outside the publication's scope
·Lacks reliable evidence
·Overstates an evolutionary claim
·Does not consider credible alternatives
·Contains factual or citation problems
·Relies heavily on outdated or weak sources
·Uses deterministic or dehumanizing language
·Has already been published without disclosure
·Contains plagiarism
·Conceals a conflict of interest
·Functions primarily as advertising
·Requires more revision than the editorial team can reasonably support
·Does not offer a clear contribution to readers

Rejection does not necessarily mean the subject lacks value. It may mean the framing, evidence, timing, or fit is not appropriate for Hominid Post.

Submission checklist

Before submitting, confirm that:

·The central question is clear
·At least two credible explanations are considered when appropriate
·Evidence, interpretation, and speculation are distinguishable
·Important claims are cited
·Sources are real and traceable
·References are complete
·Correlation is not described as causation
·Limitations are included
·Human variation is represented fairly
·Sensitive populations are treated respectfully
·Conflicts of interest are disclosed
·Images and media are properly licensed
·The work is original
·Artificial intelligence assistance has not introduced fabricated material
·The article follows the appropriate word range
·A contributor biography is included

Our standard for contributors

Hominid Post does not expect contributors to remove uncertainty from difficult questions.

We expect them to handle uncertainty honestly.

A strong contribution gives readers a clear account of the evidence, the competing explanations, the limits of the current research, and what future findings could change the conclusion. That is how educational writing earns trust.

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