scholarly journals The Transition to Village Life Required Mechanisms to Constrain Disruptive Violence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. I. M. Dunbar
Keyword(s):  
Group Size ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Structural Rearrangements ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Homicide Rates ◽  
Settlement Size ◽  
Village Life ◽  
Behavioral Mechanisms ◽  
Living Group

In hunter-gatherer societies, social friction can be alleviated by families moving between bands. However, the transition to a settled village lifestyle (usually associated with the adoption of agriculture) removes this possibility. Living in large communities necessitates the development of behavioral mechanisms for defusing these stresses. I use data on the proportion of deaths that are due to violence in contemporary small-scale societies to show that these stresses increase linearly with living-group size in hunter-gatherers, but not in horticulturalists living in permanent settlements, where instead there appear to be a series of ‘glass ceilings’ below which homicide rates oscillate. These glass ceilings correlate with the adoption of behavioral mechanisms that allow social friction to be managed. These results suggest that the transition to a settled lifestyle may be more challenging than previously assumed and that the increases in settlement size that followed the first villages necessitated what amounts to a series of structural rearrangements so as to manage inter-individual discord.

scholarly journals Accurate age estimation in small-scale societies

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (31) ◽  
pp. 8205-8210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoan Diekmann ◽  
Daniel Smith ◽  
Pascale Gerbault ◽  
Mark Dyble ◽  
Abigail E. Page ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Bayesian Approach ◽  
Age Estimation ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Monte Carlo Algorithm ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Cultural Life ◽  
Ranking Order

Precise estimation of age is essential in evolutionary anthropology, especially to infer population age structures and understand the evolution of human life history diversity. However, in small-scale societies, such as hunter-gatherer populations, time is often not referred to in calendar years, and accurate age estimation remains a challenge. We address this issue by proposing a Bayesian approach that accounts for age uncertainty inherent to fieldwork data. We developed a Gibbs sampling Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm that produces posterior distributions of ages for each individual, based on a ranking order of individuals from youngest to oldest and age ranges for each individual. We first validate our method on 65 Agta foragers from the Philippines with known ages, and show that our method generates age estimations that are superior to previously published regression-based approaches. We then use data on 587 Agta collected during recent fieldwork to demonstrate how multiple partial age ranks coming from multiple camps of hunter-gatherers can be integrated. Finally, we exemplify how the distributions generated by our method can be used to estimate important demographic parameters in small-scale societies: here, age-specific fertility patterns. Our flexible Bayesian approach will be especially useful to improve cross-cultural life history datasets for small-scale societies for which reliable age records are difficult to acquire.

scholarly journals Human social organization during the Late Pleistocene: Beyond the nomadic-egalitarian model

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manvir Singh ◽  
Luke Glowacki
Keyword(s):  
Resource Management ◽  
Social Organization ◽  
Late Pleistocene ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Middle Stone Age ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Human History ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Social Variation

Many researchers assume that until 10-12,000 years ago, humans lived in small, mobile, relatively egalitarian bands composed mostly of kin. This “nomadic-egalitarian model” informs evolutionary explanations of behavior and our understanding of how contemporary societies differ from those of our evolutionary past. Here, we synthesize research challenging this model and propose an alternative, the diverse histories model, to replace it. We outline the limitations of using recent foragers as models of Late Pleistocene societies and the considerable social variation among foragers commonly considered small-scale, mobile, and egalitarian. We review ethnographic and archaeological findings covering 34 world regions showing that non-agricultural peoples often live in groups that are more sedentary, unequal, large, politically stratified, and capable of large-scale cooperation and resource management than is normally assumed. These characteristics are not restricted to extant Holocene hunter-gatherers but, as suggested by archaeological findings from 27 Middle Stone Age sites, likely characterized societies throughout the Late Pleistocene (until c. 130 ka), if not earlier. These findings have implications for how we understand human psychological adaptations and the broad trajectory of human history.

Applying Modes of Production Analysis to Non-State, or Anarchic, Societies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bill Angelbeck
Keyword(s):  
Northwest Coast ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Coast Salish ◽  
Temporal Scales ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Subsistence Strategies ◽  
Production Analysis ◽  
Means Of Production ◽  
Seasonal Shifts ◽  
Family Groups

The concept of modes of production has been a constructive way to analyze state societies in archaeological history. Yet the utility for archaeologists working with non-state, or anarchic societies, can be quite generalized, mainly useful for broad temporal scales of analysis. To apply to non-state societies, I reorient modes of production from historical epochs to the microscale, evaluating the seasonal shifts of activity throughout the annual round. For complex hunter-gatherers, such as the Coast Salish of the Northwest Coast, modes of production shifted constantly season by season as they adjusted their subsistence strategies toward the availability of varied resources. In so doing, they implemented distinct means of production and varying relations of production to harness those resources most effectively. Some involved small-scale formations, with dispersed families (egalitarian and autonomous), while others involved corporate multi-family groups (hierarchical with ranks of authority), for instance, to process fish during annual salmon runs. In this way, Salish individuals engaged different modes of production throughout the year, each varying in levels of autonomy, which they often pursued. By focusing modes of production into particular modes, we can track the microscale revolutions that occur within broader historical epochs.

Time, diversification, and dispersal on the Australian continent

2020 ◽  
pp. 116-141
Author(s):  
Nicholas Evans
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Diversity ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Indigenous Languages ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Human Occupation ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Australian Family ◽  
Australian Continent ◽  
Time Diversification ◽  
Colonial Contact

Sahul, the ancient continent uniting Australia and New Guinea, is the only inhabited continent uniquely occupied by small-scale societies until colonial contact. And Australia (only separated from New Guinea for 10,000 years) is the only continent exclusively occupied by hunter-gatherers. This makes Sahul, and Australia, crucial for understanding how language has evolved through our deep human past. This chapter addresses three enigmas: first the discrepancy in deep linguistic diversity and typological disparity between the Australian and New Guinea hemi-continents (1 maximal clade in Australia, over 50 in New Guinea), second the apparent relatedness of all Australian indigenous languages despite continuous human occupation for 60,000 years with no external intrusions, and third the recent spread of the Pama-Nyungan branch of the Australian family over seven-eighths of the continent, most likely in the mid-Holocene?

Trust or Control? The Role of Group Size in Governing Small‐scale Irrigation Facilities*

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shanshan Miao ◽  
Xueqin Zhu ◽  
Wim Heijman ◽  
Zengwei Xu ◽  
Qian Lu
Keyword(s):  
Group Size ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Small Scale Irrigation

scholarly journals A Global Analysis of Hunter-Gatherers, Broadcast Fire Use, and Lightning-Fire-Prone Landscapes

Fire ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Coughlan ◽  
Brian Magi ◽  
Kelly Derr
Keyword(s):  
Human Ecology ◽  
Logistic Model ◽  
Global Analysis ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Fire Dynamics ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Fire Use ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Lightning Fire ◽  
Insight Into

We examined the relationships between lightning-fire-prone environments, socioeconomic metrics, and documented use of broadcast fire by small-scale hunter-gatherer societies. Our approach seeks to re-assess human-fire dynamics in biomes that are susceptible to lightning-triggered fires. We quantify global lightning-fire-prone environments using mean monthly lightning and climatological flammability, and then compare how well those environments and socioeconomic variables (population density, mobility, and subsistence type) serve as predictors of observed broadcast fire use from the ethnographic data. We use a logistic model for all vegetated, forested, and unforested biomes. Our global analysis of human-fire-landscape interaction in three hundred and thirty-nine hunter-gatherer groups demonstrates that lightning-fire-prone environments strongly predict for hunter-gatherer fire use. While we do not maintain that lightning-fire-prone environments determine the use of fire by small societies, they certainly appear to invite its use. Our results further suggest that discounting or ignoring human agency contradicts empirical evidence that hunter-gatherers used fire even in locations where lightning could explain the presence of fire. Paleoecological research on fire and hypothesis testing using global fire modeling should consider insights from human ecology in the interpretation of data and results. More broadly, our results suggest that small-scale societies can provide insight into sustainable fire management in lightning-fire-prone landscapes.

scholarly journals Traditional Human Populations and Nonhuman Primates Show Parallel Gut Microbiome Adaptations to Analogous Ecological Conditions

mSystems ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (6) ◽  
pp. e00815-20
Author(s):  
Ashok K. Sharma ◽  
Klara Petrzelkova ◽  
Barbora Pafco ◽  
Carolyn A. Jost Robinson ◽  
Terence Fuh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Gut Microbiome ◽  
Nonhuman Primates ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Human Populations ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Western Lowland Gorilla ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Adverse Health Outcomes ◽  
Dietary Niche

ABSTRACTCompared with urban-industrial populations, small-scale human communities worldwide share a significant number of gut microbiome traits with nonhuman primates. This overlap is thought to be driven by analogous dietary triggers; however, the ecological and functional bases of this similarity are not fully understood. To start addressing this issue, fecal metagenomes of BaAka hunter-gatherers and traditional Bantu agriculturalists from the Central African Republic were profiled and compared with those of a sympatric western lowland gorilla group (Gorillagorilla gorilla) across two seasons of variable dietary intake. Results show that gorilla gut microbiomes shared similar functional traits with each human group, depending on seasonal dietary behavior. Specifically, parallel microbiome traits were observed between hunter-gatherers and gorillas when the latter consumed more structural polysaccharides during dry seasons, while small-scale agriculturalist and gorilla microbiomes showed significant functional overlap when gorillas consumed more seasonal ripe fruit during wet seasons. Notably, dominance of microbial transporters, transduction systems, and gut xenobiotic metabolism was observed in association with traditional agriculture and energy-dense diets in gorillas at the expense of a functional microbiome repertoire capable of metabolizing more complex polysaccharides. Differential abundance of bacterial taxa that typically distinguish traditional from industrialized human populations (e.g., Prevotella spp.) was also recapitulated in the human and gorilla groups studied, possibly reflecting the degree of polysaccharide complexity included in each group’s dietary niche. These results show conserved functional gut microbiome adaptations to analogous diets in small-scale human populations and nonhuman primates, highlighting the role of plant dietary polysaccharides and diverse environmental exposures in this convergence.IMPORTANCE The results of this study highlight parallel gut microbiome traits in human and nonhuman primates, depending on subsistence strategy. Although these similarities have been reported before, the functional and ecological bases of this convergence are not fully understood. Here, we show that this parallelism is, in part, likely modulated by the complexity of plant carbohydrates consumed and by exposures to diverse xenobiotics of natural and artificial origin. Furthermore, we discuss how divergence from these parallel microbiome traits is typically associated with adverse health outcomes in human populations living under culturally westernized subsistence patterns. This is important information as we trace the specific dietary and environmental triggers associated with the loss and gain of microbial functions as humans adapt to various dietary niches.

scholarly journals From hunter-gatherers to nomadic pastoralists: forager bands do not tell the whole story of the evolution of human cooperation

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius Warg Næss
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Evolution Of Cooperation ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Close Link ◽  
Nomadic Pastoralists ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
History Of

The history of humanity is a story of cooperation. Issues pertaining to the origin of human cooperation have, however, been characterized by a forager bias, the assumption being that they have a close link to our evolutionary past. In contrast little effort has been spent on documenting and explaining cooperative herding among nomadic pastoralists. As the Mongolian empire attest to nomadic pastoralists—in contrast to foragers—can form large-scale empires. In combination with the prevalence of small-scale cooperative herding groups, nomadic pastoral societies thus provide a fertile ground for expanding our understanding of the evolution of cooperation. In this paper I aim to extend our understanding of human cooperation through a comparison of the most well-known cooperative herding groups—namely the Mongolian khot ail and the Saami siida—and the most well-studied forager bands, namely the Hadza camp and Ache band.

scholarly journals Hadza hunter-gatherers prefer deontologists as social partners, but most Hadza are not deontologists

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristopher M Smith ◽  
Coren Lee Apicella
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Partner Choice ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Social Selection ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Social Partners

Researchers hypothesize that social selection resulting from partner choice may have shaped deontological moral reasoning in humans. Indeed, people in Western societies judge deontologists to be more cooperative and trustworthy than utilitarians, and prefer them as partners. We test if the preference for deontologists as social partners generalizes to a small-scale society, specifically the Hadza, who are extant hunter-gatherers residing in Tanzania. We presented 134 Hadza participants with three ecologically-relevant sacrificial dilemmas and asked them to judge whether the actor should sacrifice one person to save five. We then randomly assigned participants to hear that the actor made either a deontological or utilitarian decision and asked them to make moral and partner choice judgments about the actor in the dilemma. Participants were ambivalent about whether the actor should make the utilitarian decision. However, participants who said the actor should make the deontological decision judged the utilitarian option worse, but participants who said the actor should make the utilitarian decision judged both actions to be equally bad. Regardless of whether participants believed the actor should make the utilitarian decision, participants judged the utilitarian actor lower on traits considered important for social partners, compared to the deontological actor. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that utilitarians are perceived worse than deontologists. However, because participants do not show a preference for the deontological option, it raises questions as to whether partner choice shaped deontological moral decision-making in humans.

scholarly journals When Individuals Do Not Stop at the Skin

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Barnard
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Group Size ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
Social Brain ◽  
Evolution Of Language ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Three Phases

This chapter examines contemporary hunter-gatherer societies in Africa and elsewhere in light of the social brain and the distributed mind hypotheses. One question asked is whether African hunter-gatherers offer the best model for societies at the dawn of symbolic culture, or whether societies elsewhere offer better models. The chapter argues for the former. Theoretical concepts touched on include sharing and exchange, universal kin classification, and the relation between group size and social networks. The chapter offers reinterpretations of classic anthropological notions such as Wissler's age-area hypothesis, Durkheim's collective consciousness and Lévi-Strauss's elementary structures of kinship. Finally, the chapter outlines a theory of the co-evolution of language and kinship through three phases (signifying, syntactic and symbolic) and the subsequent breakdown of the principles of the symbolic phase across much of the globe in Neolithic times.

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