Innovation, life history and social networks in human evolution

There is a famous puzzle about the first 3 million years of archaeologically visible human technological history. The pace of change, of innovation and its uptake, is extraordinarily slow. In particular, the famous handaxes of the Acheulian technological tradition first appeared about 1.7 Ma, and persisted with little change until about 800 ka, perhaps even longer. In this paper, I will offer an explanation of that stasis based in the life history and network characteristics that we infer (on phylogenetic grounds) to have characterized earlier human species. The core ideas are that (i) especially in earlier periods of hominin evolution, we are likely to find archaeological traces only of widespread and persisting technologies and practices; (ii) the record is not a record of the rate of innovation, but the rate of innovations establishing in a landscape; (iii) innovations are extremely vulnerable to stochastic loss while confined to the communities in which they are made and established; (iv) the export of innovation from the local group is sharply constrained if there is a general pattern of hostility and suspicion between groups, or even if there is just little contact between adults of adjoining groups. That pattern is typical of great apes and likely, therefore, to have characterized at least early hominin social lives. Innovations are unlikely to spread by adult-to-adult interactions across community boundaries. (v) Chimpanzees and bonobos are characterized by male philopatry and subadult female dispersal; that is, therefore, the most likely early hominin pattern. If so, the only innovations at all likely to expand beyond the point of origin are those acquired by subadult females, and ones that can be expressed by those females, at high enough frequency and salience for them to spread, in the bands that the females join. These are very serious filters on the spread of innovation. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals’.

Download Full-text

Life history and pathogenicity of Eimeria adenoeides Moore & Brown, 1951, in the turkey poult

Parasitology ◽

10.1017/s0031182000021065 ◽

1958 ◽

Vol 48 (1-2) ◽

pp. 70-88 ◽

Cited By ~ 36

Author(s):

M. J. Clarkson

Keyword(s):

Life History ◽

Life Cycle ◽

Great Britain ◽

General Pattern ◽

Blood Picture ◽

Highly Pathogenic ◽

Turkey Poult ◽

Turkey Poults ◽

Cell Inoculation ◽

Microscopic Pathology

The life cycle and pathogenicity of a strain of Eimeria isolated in Great Britain from turkey poults by single cell inoculation are described and, using the criteria laid down by Tyzzer, the species is identified as E. adenoeides.The life cycle is of the same general pattern as in other Eimeria species, consisting of two asexual and one sexual generations.The organism is highly pathogenic for young poults, a dose of 200,000 oocysts producing 100 % mortality in 3-week-old birds and smaller doses causing reduced weight gain. Birds 11 weeks old resisted a dose of 3 million oocysts.The gross and microscopic pathology of the infection is described. No changes were found in the blood picture.

Download Full-text

Life History Tactics in Monkeys and Apes: Focus on Female-Dispersal Species

Primates and Cetaceans - Primatology Monographs ◽

10.1007/978-4-431-54523-1_9 ◽

2013 ◽

pp. 173-206 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Juichi Yamagiwa ◽

Yukiko Shimooka ◽

David S. Sprague

Keyword(s):

Life History ◽

Female Dispersal

Download Full-text

Sporadic sampling, not climatic forcing, drives observed early hominin diversity

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1721538115 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 115 (19) ◽

pp. 4891-4896 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Simon J. Maxwell ◽

Philip J. Hopley ◽

Paul Upchurch ◽

Christophe Soligo

Keyword(s):

Fossil Record ◽

Detailed Examination ◽

Hominin Evolution ◽

Rock Exposure ◽

Early Hominin ◽

Positive Correlations ◽

Taxic Diversity ◽

Diversity Estimates

The role of climate change in the origin and diversification of early hominins is hotly debated. Most accounts of early hominin evolution link observed fluctuations in species diversity to directional shifts in climate or periods of intense climatic instability. None of these hypotheses, however, have tested whether observed diversity patterns are distorted by variation in the quality of the hominin fossil record. Here, we present a detailed examination of early hominin diversity dynamics, including both taxic and phylogenetically corrected diversity estimates. Unlike past studies, we compare these estimates to sampling metrics for rock availability (hominin-, primate-, and mammal-bearing formations) and collection effort, to assess the geological and anthropogenic controls on the sampling of the early hominin fossil record. Taxic diversity, primate-bearing formations, and collection effort show strong positive correlations, demonstrating that observed patterns of early hominin taxic diversity can be explained by temporal heterogeneity in fossil sampling rather than genuine evolutionary processes. Peak taxic diversity at 1.9 million years ago (Ma) is a sampling artifact, reflecting merely maximal rock availability and collection effort. In contrast, phylogenetic diversity estimates imply peak diversity at 2.4 Ma and show little relation to sampling metrics. We find that apparent relationships between early hominin diversity and indicators of climatic instability are, in fact, driven largely by variation in suitable rock exposure and collection effort. Our results suggest that significant improvements in the quality of the fossil record are required before the role of climate in hominin evolution can be reliably determined.

Download Full-text

The importance of life history and population regulation for the evolution of social learning

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2019.0492 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 375 (1803) ◽

pp. 20190492 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Dominik Deffner ◽

Richard McElreath

Keyword(s):

Life History ◽

Social Learning ◽

Age Structure ◽

Life Histories ◽

Population Regulation ◽

Individual Learning ◽

Vital Rates ◽

Strategic Learning ◽

Cognition And Culture ◽

Exemplary Model

Social learning and life history interact in human adaptation, but nearly all models of the evolution of social learning omit age structure and population regulation. Further progress is hindered by a poor appreciation of how life history affects selection on learning. We discuss why life history and age structure are important for social learning and present an exemplary model of the evolution of social learning in which demographic properties of the population arise endogenously from assumptions about per capita vital rates and different forms of population regulation. We find that, counterintuitively, a stronger reliance on social learning is favoured in organisms characterized by ‘fast’ life histories with high mortality and fertility rates compared to ‘slower’ life histories typical of primates. Long lifespans make early investment in learning more profitable and increase the probability that the environment switches within generations. Both effects favour more individual learning. Additionally, under fertility regulation (as opposed to mortality regulation), more juveniles are born shortly after switches in the environment when many adults are not adapted, creating selection for more individual learning. To explain the empirical association between social learning and long life spans and to appreciate the implications for human evolution, we need further modelling frameworks allowing strategic learning and cumulative culture. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals’.

Download Full-text

Introduction to special issue: ‘Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals’

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rstb.2019.0489 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 375 (1803) ◽

pp. 20190489

Author(s):

Alison Gopnik ◽

Willem E. Frankenhuis ◽

Michael Tomasello

Keyword(s):

Life History ◽

Old Age ◽

Developmental Psychology ◽

Human Life ◽

Empirical Work ◽

Reproductive Rate ◽

Special Issue ◽

Wide Range ◽

Cognition And Culture ◽

High Level

This special issue focuses on the relationship between life history and learning, especially during human evolution. ‘Life history’ refers to the developmental programme of an organism, including its period of immaturity, reproductive rate and timing, caregiving investment and longevity. Across many species an extended childhood and high caregiving investment appear to be correlated with particular kinds of plasticity and learning. Human life history is particularly distinctive; humans evolved an exceptionally long childhood and old age, and an unusually high level of caregiving investment, at the same time that they evolved distinctive capacities for cognition and culture. The contributors explore the relations between life history, plasticity and learning across a wide range of methods and populations, including theoretical and empirical work in biology, anthropology and developmental psychology. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Life history and learning: how childhood, caregiving and old age shape cognition and culture in humans and other animals’.

Download Full-text

Increased Dietary Breadth in Early Hominin Evolution: Revisiting Arguments and Evidence with a Focus on Biogeochemical Contributions

The Evolution of Hominin Diets - Vertebrate Paleobiology and Paleoanthropology ◽

10.1007/978-1-4020-9699-0_18 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 229-240 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Matt Sponheimer ◽

Darna L. Dufour

Keyword(s):

Dietary Breadth ◽

Hominin Evolution ◽

Early Hominin

Download Full-text

Phonation takes precedence over articulation in development as well as evolution of language

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x13004159 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 37 (6) ◽

pp. 567-568 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

D. Kimbrough Oller

Keyword(s):

Vocal Development ◽

Evolution Of Language ◽

Hominin Evolution ◽

Target Article ◽

Early Hominin ◽

Brain Change ◽

Early Human ◽

Human Specific

AbstractEarly human vocal development is characterized first by emerging control of phonation and later by prosodic and supraglottal articulation. The target article has missed the opportunity to use these facts in the characterization of evolution in language-specific brain mechanisms. Phonation appears to be the initial human-specific brain change for language, and it was presumably a key target of selection in early hominin evolution.

Download Full-text

Early Hominin Evolution: The Australopiths

Primate Behavior and Human Origins ◽

10.4324/9781315723006-36 ◽

2015 ◽

pp. 382-397

Keyword(s):

Hominin Evolution ◽

Early Hominin

Download Full-text

Social Brain, Distributed Mind

10.5871/bacad/9780197264522.001.0001 ◽

2010 ◽

Cited By ~ 35

Keyword(s):

Material Culture ◽

Distributed Cognition ◽

Small World ◽

Human Cognition ◽

Social Brain ◽

Social Lives ◽

Hominin Evolution ◽

Language Technology ◽

The Social ◽

Spatially Distributed

To understand who we are and why we are, we need to understand both modern humans and the ancestral stages that brought us to this point. The core to that story has been the role of evolving cognition — the social brain — in mediating the changes in behaviour that we see in the archaeological record. This volume brings together two powerful approaches — the social brain hypothesis and the concept of the distributed mind. The volume compares perspectives on these two approaches from a range of disciplines, including archaeology, psychology, philosophy, sociology and the cognitive and evolutionary sciences. A particular focus is on the role that material culture plays as a scaffold for distributed cognition, and how almost three million years of artefact and tool use provides the data for tracing key changes in areas such as language, technology, kinship, music, social networks and the politics of local, everyday interaction in small-world societies. A second focus is on how, during the course of hominin evolution, increasingly large spatially distributed communities created stresses that threatened social cohesion. This volume offers the possibility of new insights into the evolution of human cognition and social lives that will further our understanding of the relationship between mind and world.

Download Full-text