Darwin purposely avoided the subject of human evolution in his book Origin of Species, but 12 years later he met the subject head on in The Descent of Man and selection in relation to sex.
Again, Darwin countered Victorian-era assumptions of special creation with his explanation of descent from a common ancestor and evolution through natural selection.
In this book Darwin introduced the concept of sexual selection, a process that explains some features—like the male peacock’s extravagant tail—as adaptations to ensure reproductive success and the continuation of the species.
150 years later we can see that Darwin did not get everything right in the Descent of Man—like his conclusion that men are more highly evolved than women--but his work brought an intellectual framework to the subject of human origins that paved the way for further research.
Image credit: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Human_evolutionary_tree.jpg
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