scholarly journals Polygyny without wealth: popularity in gift games predicts polygyny in BaYaka Pygmies

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (5) ◽  
pp. 150054 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikhil Chaudhary ◽  
Gul Deniz Salali ◽  
James Thompson ◽  
Mark Dyble ◽  
Abigail Page ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Resource Availability ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Wealth Accumulation ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Marriage Patterns ◽  
Phenotypic Quality ◽  
Wealth Inequalities ◽  
Polygynous Marriage

The occurrence of polygynous marriage in hunter–gatherer societies, which do not accumulate wealth, remains largely unexplored since resource availability is dependent on male hunting capacity and limited by the lack of storage. Hunter–gatherer societies offer the greatest insight in to human evolution since they represent the majority of our species' evolutionary history. In order to elucidate the evolution of hunter–gatherer polygyny, we study marriage patterns of BaYaka Pygmies. We investigate (i) rates of polygyny among BaYaka hunter–gatherers; (ii) whether polygyny confers a fitness benefit to BaYaka men; (iii) in the absence of wealth inequalities, what are the alternative explanations for polygyny among the BaYaka. To understand the latter, we explore differences in phenotypic quality (height and strength), and social capital (popularity in gift games). We find polygynous men have increased reproductive fitness; and that social capital and popularity but not phenotypic quality might have been important mechanisms by which some male hunter–gatherers sustained polygynous marriages before the onset of agriculture and wealth accumulation.

The evolved developmental niche and children’s developing morality

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela M. Kurth ◽  
Darcia Narvaez
Keyword(s):  
Young Child ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Self Regulation ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Human History ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Supportive Environment ◽  
Developmental Niche ◽  
Small Band ◽  
Prosocial Behaviours

Like every animal, human offspring evolved to fit into their communities, but social fittedness for mammals requires a supportive early nest that fosters socio-emotional intelligence, self-regulation, and sympathy. Within a supportive environment, children naturally develop orientations that facilitate prosocial behaviours within the community. We use the evolved developmental niche (EDN), apparent in 95% of human history as small-band hunter-gatherers, for a baseline representative of human evolution. In these societies, children grow into cooperative, agile moral actors. We compare the EDN with five modern approaches to young child group care and make suggestions to early caregivers on how to provide, in the modern world, what children evolved to need.

The Original Partnership Societies

2019 ◽  
pp. 154-180
Author(s):  
Riane Eisler
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
The Other ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Agricultural Revolution ◽  
Cooperative Behaviors ◽  
The Many ◽  
Ancient States

Mobile foragers—also called nomadic hunter-gatherers—constitute the oldest form of human social organization, predating by far the agricultural revolution of about 10,000 years ago as well as the rise of pastoralists, tribal horticulturalists, chiefdoms, kingdoms, and ancient states. In the debates about the nature of human nature—whether we are more inclined toward war or peace, selfishness or altruism—nomadic forager societies are regularly evoked to draw inferences about human existence “in a state of nature” before the development of civilization. Studies of nomadic forager band societies suggest that humanity’s ancient orientation actually was toward partnership and peace rather than domination and war over the many millennia of human evolution. The main take-home lesson from a careful study of nomadic forager partnership societies—re-enforced by archeological studies, the recent Nordic experience, and other evidence—is that humans are capable of living in egalitarian social systems where neither sex dominates the other, where violence is minimized, and where prosocial cooperation and caring typify social life. This image is not a utopian fantasy but rather a set of potentials, if not inclinations, stemming from our evolutionary heritage. Since partnership behaviors have been essential to survival for the millions of years that humans and their ancestors foraged for a living, the study of archaeology and nomadic forager societies raises an intriguing possibility. Given the long-standing evolutionary legacy of partnership, human minds and dispositions may be especially inclined toward the empathic, caring, egalitarian, prosocial, cooperative behaviors.

Love, the Brain, and Becoming Human

2019 ◽  
pp. 44-71
Author(s):  
Riane Eisler
Keyword(s):  
Human Brain ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
The Brain ◽  
The Continuum

This chapter introduces a new perspective on the role of love in human evolution and human development. The bonds of love, whether between parent and child, lovers, or close friends, may all have a common biological root, activating neurochemicals that make us feel good. Like other human capacities, such as consciousness, learning, and creativity, love has a long and fascinating evolutionary history. Indeed, the evolution of love appears to be integral to the development of our human brain and hence to much that distinguishes us from other species. Moreover, love plays a vital, though still largely unrecognized, role in human development, with evidence accumulating about the negative effects of love deprivation as well as the benefits of love. But whether or not our needs for meaning and love are met, and whether or not our capacities for creativity and love are expressed, are largely determined by the interaction of biology and culture—specifically, the degree to which a culture or subculture orients to the partnership or domination end of the continuum.

scholarly journals Bonobos voluntarily hand food to others but not toys or tools

2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1886) ◽  
pp. 20181536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Krupenye ◽  
Jingzhi Tan ◽  
Brian Hare
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Brain Size ◽  
Active Form ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
The Other ◽  
Controlled Experiments ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Food Transfer ◽  
Common Descent ◽  
Food Items

A key feature of human prosociality is direct transfers , the most active form of sharing in which donors voluntarily hand over resources in their possession . Direct transfers buffer hunter-gatherers against foraging shortfalls. The emergence and elaboration of this behaviour thus likely played a key role in human evolution by promoting cooperative interdependence and ensuring that humans' growing energetic needs (e.g. for increasing brain size) were more reliably met. According to the strong prosociality hypothesis , among great apes only humans exhibit sufficiently strong prosocial motivations to directly transfer food. The versatile prosociality hypothesis suggests instead that while other apes may make transfers in constrained settings, only humans share flexibly across food and non-food contexts. In controlled experiments, chimpanzees typically transfer objects but not food, supporting both hypotheses. In this paper, we show in two experiments that bonobos directly transfer food but not non-food items. These findings show that, in some contexts, bonobos exhibit a human-like motivation for direct food transfer. However, humans share across a far wider range of contexts, lending support to the versatile prosociality hypothesis. Our species' unusual prosocial flexibility is likely built on a prosocial foundation we share through common descent with the other apes.

Human Evolution

1984 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 182-198
Author(s):  
Catherine Badgley
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Pan Paniscus ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
Great Apes ◽  
Sister Group ◽  
The Family ◽  
History Of ◽  
Living Species ◽  
Single Living

The evolutionary history of humans is well understood in outline, compared to that of many other groups of mammals. But human evolution remains enigmatic in its details, and these are compelling both scientifically and personally because they relate to the biological uniqueness of humans. Humans are placed in the primate family Hominidae, which, in traditional classifications, contains a single living species, Homo sapiens. The closest living relatives of humans are great apes: the chimpanzees Pan paniscus and Pan troglodytes, the gorilla Gorilla gorilla, and the orangutan Pongo pygmaeus. These apes have traditionally been placed in the family Pongidae as the sister group of Hominidae. Living Hominidae and Pongidae, together with Hylobatidae (gibbons) comprise the modern representatives of the primate suborder Hominoidea.

The shared evolutionary history of kinship classifications and language

2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 402-403 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert M. Seyfarth ◽  
Dorothy L. Cheney
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
The Other ◽  
History Of ◽  
System Maps

AbstractAmong monkeys and apes, both the recognition and classification of individuals and the recognition and classification of vocalizations constitute discrete combinatorial systems. One system maps onto the other, suggesting that during human evolution kinship classifications and language shared a common cognitive precursor.

scholarly journals Violence in the prehistoric period of Japan: the spatio-temporal pattern of skeletal evidence for violence in the Jomon period

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 20160028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hisashi Nakao ◽  
Kohei Tamura ◽  
Yui Arimatsu ◽  
Tomomi Nakagawa ◽  
Naoko Matsumoto ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Temporal Pattern ◽  
Selective Pressure ◽  
Human Behaviour ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Lethal Violence ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Spatio Temporal

Whether man is predisposed to lethal violence, ranging from homicide to warfare, and how that may have impacted human evolution, are among the most controversial topics of debate on human evolution. Although recent studies on the evolution of warfare have been based on various archaeological and ethnographic data, they have reported mixed results: it is unclear whether or not warfare among prehistoric hunter–gatherers was common enough to be a component of human nature and a selective pressure for the evolution of human behaviour. This paper reports the mortality attributable to violence, and the spatio-temporal pattern of violence thus shown among ancient hunter–gatherers using skeletal evidence in prehistoric Japan (the Jomon period: 13 000 cal BC–800 cal BC). Our results suggest that the mortality due to violence was low and spatio-temporally highly restricted in the Jomon period, which implies that violence including warfare in prehistoric Japan was not common.

scholarly journals The Role of Biological Significance in Human Learning and Memory

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin M. Seitz ◽  
Aaron P. Blaisdell ◽  
Cody W. Polack ◽  
Ralph R. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Human Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Prior Experience ◽  
Biological Significance ◽  
Human Memory ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Human Learning ◽  
Memory Research ◽  
History Of

Deeply rooted within the history of experimental psychology is the search for general laws of learning that hold across tasks and species. Central to this enterprise has been the notion of equipotentiality; that any two events have the same likelihood of being associated with one another as any other pair of events. Much work, generally summarized as ‘biological constraints on learning,’ has challenged this view, and demonstrates pre-existing relations between cues and outcomes, based on genes and prior experience, that influence potential associability. Learning theorists and comparative psychologists have thus recognized the need to consider how the evolutionary history as well as prior experience of the organism being studied influences its ability to learn about and navigate its environment. We suggest that current models of human memory, and human memory research in general, lack sufficient consideration of how human evolution has shaped human memory systems. We review several findings that suggest the human memory system preferentially processes information relevant to biological fitness, and highlight potential theoretical and applied benefits afforded by adopting this functionalist perspective.

Evolution of mating strategies: Evidence from the fossil and archaeological records

2000 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 615-616
Author(s):  
Steven Mithen
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Human Evolution ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Mating Strategies ◽  
Good Genes ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Persuasive Argument ◽  
Males And Females ◽  
Strategic Pluralism

Gangestad & Simpson provide a persuasive argument that both men and women have evolved conditional mating strategies. Their references to “ancestral” males and females are rather vague, which is unfortunate, as they seek to justify their arguments by invoking human evolutionary history. When one actually examines the evidence for human evolution further, more support for their arguments can be found, as predominant types of mating strategies are likely to have shifted in light of environmental and anatomical developments. We can also see in the archaeological record evidence for a further dimension of strategic pluralism – the use of material culture to advertise good genes in some species of ancestral males.

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