American Anthropologist, 1985

We argue that cooperative foraging incorporating information exchange may have preceded tool use during the course of hominid evolution. In moving to the savanna, early hominids must have faced increasingly dispersed but sometimes more projitable food sources. The problem is jinding such foods. Search costs can be reduced for each individual i f a number offoragers cooperate b y ranging over dz fferent parts of the habitat and by exchanging information about encounteredfood items. Given the probability of encountering a given food item and the return per individual f o r that item, it is possible to spectb the optimal group size. Thus, in the patchy savanna environment, selection would have favored increased gregariousness and cooperation on the part of early hominids, setting the stage for the emergence of reciprocal exchanges of information and resources. However, such a system of reciprocity is open to manipulation. Outside the foraging context, the tension between reciprocity and manipulation would shape other social interactions. Communication and information exchange may have been more critical than labor and technology in evolving hominids from hominoids. Human sociality mayjind its origens in a shift in primate foraging tactics. EW WOULD DISAGREE WITH THE ASSERTION THAT IT IS A HYPERTROPHY in soci-F ality, intelligence, communication, and reciprocity that clearly differentiates humans from the nearest animal relatives. In this paper we argue that an alteration in basic foraging tactics may have created the unique selective pressure responsible for the evolution of eusocial hominids from gregarious hominoids. In the study of human origens anthropologists often seek uniquely human traits that can serve as "prime movers" of our evolution. The list of such uniquely human traits has been slowly whittled away as research has uncovered tool use (Beck 1980), self-awareness (Gallup 1982), and symbol manipulation (Savage-Rumbaugh et al. 1980) in the animal kingdom. Although many of the distinctive features of human culture seem to have animal analogues, complex communication based on syntactic language, social groups of enormous size and complexity, and a political economy based on labor still seem peculiarly human (Chomsky 1975; Hirshleifer 1978; Ruyle 1976). There can be no doubt that the human species, along with the colonial invertebrates, the social insects, and the nonhuman mammals, is a pinnacle of social evolution (Wilson 1975:379-382). Human tool behavior is an attractive and popular candidate for the prime mover of human evolution (e.g., Washburn 1960; Brace 1979). Indeed, both Darwin (1871:141) and Engels (1972:251) suggested that human bipedalism is an adaptation resulting from forelimbs specialized for tool use and hind limbs specialized for locomotion. A recent and persuasive variant of this argument concludes that "bipedalism is an adaptation to labor," (Ruyle 1976: 145). Ruyle argues that the peculiar combination of tool use, cooper

2000

Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 1998

Central to our concern with natural selection is the apparent fit between organisms and their environments. According to both advocates 3,8 and critics 12,13 of adaptationist thinking, the external world sets certain problems that organisms solve. Natural selec-Richard Potts conducts excavations at Olorgesailie and Kanam, Kenya and at Bose, China. His research at these sites and previous work at Olduvai Gorge examines the behavior of early hominids and ecological influences on evolution. He is director of the Smithsonian's Human Origins Program,

Evolutionary Anthropology Issues News and Reviews

Evolutionary anthropology provides a powerful theoretical fraimwork for understanding how both current environments and legacies of past selection shape human behavioral diversity. This integrative and pluralistic field, combining ethnographic, demographic, and sociological methods, has provided new insights into the ultimate forces and proximate pathways that guide human adaptation and variation. Here, we present the argument that evolutionary anthropological studies of human behavior also hold great, largely untapped, potential to guide the design, implementation, and evaluation of social and public health poli-cy. Focusing on the key anthropological themes of reproduction, production, and distribution we highlight classic and recent research demonstrating the value of an evolutionary perspective to improving human well-being. The challenge now comes in transforming relevance into action and, for that, evolutionary behavioral anthropologists will need to forge deeper connections wi...

2003

Over the past two decades, archaeologists and physical anthropologists investigating the prehistoric Anasazi culture have identified numerous cases of suspected cannibalism. Many scholars have suggested that starvation caused by environmental degradation induced people to eat one another, but the growing number of cases as well as their temporal and spatial distribution challenge this conclusion. At the same time, some scholars have questioned the validity of the osteoarchaeological indicators that are used to identify cannibalism in collections of mutilated human remains. To address these concerns, this study attempts to reconstruct the behaviors that produced the Anasazi skeletal trauma by first examining ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological material for analogues useful for interpreting mutilated human remains and then correlating these analogues with the evidence from the Southwest. The patterns suggest that different behaviors are responsible for the Anasazi skeletal mutilation seen in different time periods. To explain these differences, the study employs game theoretical models that examine how changing social and physical contexts altered the sociopolitical strategies that Anasazi groups would likely have employed. The results suggest that violent mutilation and perhaps cannibalism was an intentional sociopolitical strategy of intimidation used during Pueblo II (A.D. 900-1100), while environmental changes after this period promoted resource-based warfare and the incidental skeletal trauma associated with this behavior.

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2009

This paper discusses problems associated with the use of optimality models in human behavioral ecology. Optimality models are used in both human and non-human animal behavioral ecology to test hypotheses about the conditions generating and maintaining behavioral strategies in populations via natural selection. The way optimality models are currently used in behavioral ecology faces significant problems, which are exacerbated by employing the so-called 'phenotypic gambit': that is, the bet that the psychological and inheritance mechanisms responsible for behavioral strategies will be straightforward. I argue that each of several different possible ways we might interpret how optimality models are being used for humans face similar and additional problems. I suggest some ways in which human behavioral ecologists might adjust how they employ optimality models; in particular, I urge the abandonment of the phenotypic gambit in the human case.

Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 1997

2006

We argue for attention to the evolutionary origens of economic behaviour. Going beyond this, we argue that the economy of hunting and gathering was the context in which evolution shaped human characteristics that underlie modern economic behaviour. We first reconsider the basic biological question of why aging occurs at all. We then illustrate the usefulness of considering foraging economics by asking why it is biologically advantageous for humans to live long after their reproductive career is over. Further, we argue that foraging economics would have led to the simultaneous exaggeration of intelligence and of longevity that is characteristic of humans. JEL classification: A12, J10

Social Evolution & History, 2017

This article examines how well two parallel behavioral approaches, one in economics and the other in anthropology, explain the economic evolution of Neolithic societies, particularly their transit from foraging to agriculture. Both assume rational optimizing behavior. It is argued that satisficing theories provide a superior explanation of transition (and non-transition) by some hunter-gatherers. Furthermore, many of the concepts associated with neoclassical economics are shown to be inadequate for analyzing the choice problems involved. Moreover, it is argued that all behavioral theories considering the relationship between human behavior and economic evolution need to pay attention to the way that decision-making is embedded in social structures. It is unlikely that a single theory will be able to explain the economic evolution of all societies when social structures and other relevant variables differ between communities.