A Road to Forager Cooperation

Summary

Humans have a unique capacity among primates for cooperation. Recent foragers routinely cooperate in economic activities, and a range of social mechanisms help maintain that cooperation. We argue on the basis of hunting practices and weapon systems that some of these social mechanisms emerged comparatively late in hominin evolutionary history. Large game hunting by Early and Middle Pleistocene hominins involved simple, short range weapons and depended on participation of multiple individuals. The interests of participants were closely aligned in these contexts. Nearly everyone was present at the kill, making cooperation and sharing easy to monitor and maintain. The appearance of long-distance projectile weapons in the Late Pleistocene enabled one or a few individuals to take large, elusive game more efficiently. This freed some individuals to pursue other economic activities, providing a broader and more flexible economic base for the group. However, greater autonomy also created more opportunities for deception and unbalanced reciprocity. When individuals have greater latitude to act as free agents, various social mechanisms can help to ensure honesty and equity. The intense leveling mechanisms documented among egalitarian hunter-gatherers likely evolved in response to the tensions which arose from greater independence in foraging.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Archaeological Perspectives on the Evolution of Forager Cooperation

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14376