Physical Anthropology

  The person that had the biggest impact on Darwin’s development of his theory of natural selection was Thomas Malthus. Malthus’s work was the last push that Darwin needed to concoct his theory on evolution. Even though Thomas Malthus was an economist, his most famous work, An Essay on the Principle of Population , would have significant and far reaching effects outside his field. The main point of his that would end up influencing both Darwin and Wallace were that populations grew faster than their food supply which created a constant struggle for existence. He also noted that plants and animals create more offspring than can survive, which led to overpopulation. These observations that Malthus made would become the answer to Darwin’s question “What is preventing organisms from reproducing at their potential?”. Darwin built upon the ideas of Malthus to come to his conclusion of natural selection.Food can be thought of as just another resource. Scarcity in resources inevitably leads to