CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 157Language and cultural evolutionPleistocene-Era Hominins and ArchaeologyEvolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior

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

Open access
Singh, Manvir, Glowacki, Luke·2022·Evolution and Human Behavior
DOI 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2022.07.003
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

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.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2022.07.003

Cites

6 of 6 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • CS does not function flawlessly in hunter-gatherer contexts.

    “Yet CS does not function flawlessly in huntergatherer contexts (Singh & Glowacki, 2022)”

    From Durkheim, Indoctrinability and the Moral Ambivalence of Human Sociality (2026) · cites this paper as Singh & Glowacki, 2022

    The “Non-egalitarianism” section (page unavailable) reports that some mobile, small-scale forager societies deviate from egalitarianism and exhibit coercive leadership. That supports the general point that social arrangements in hunter-gatherer contexts do not always work flawlessly, but the cited passages do not identify or assess the specific process abbreviated “CS.” (LLM, conf=0.72)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • Richerson and Boyd cite an illustrative example of an !Kung San man confronted by an arrow tip of unfamiliar style, which illustrates the relevance of symbols for the territorial demarcation of group-boundaries also in hunter-gatherers.

    “Richerson and Boyd (2005: 221) cite an illustrative example of an! Kung San man who was confronted by an arrow tip of unfamiliar style.In his view, the arrow tip had been lost by unfamiliar, and therefore dangerous, people who entered the territory.This example illustrates the relevance of symbols for the territorial demarcation of group-boundaries also in hunter-gatherers (Singh & Glowacki, 2022)”

    From Durkheim, Indoctrinability and the Moral Ambivalence of Human Sociality (2026) · cites this paper as Singh & Glowacki, 2022

    The Corporate groups section (page unavailable) reports that the Ju/’hoansi had named groups that held land rights, supporting the territorial-group aspect of the claim. It does not describe an unfamiliar arrow tip or say that symbols demarcated those groups’ territories; the arrow-tip anecdote is attributed to Richerson and Boyd in the citing sentence. (LLM, conf=0.78)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Research works printed but not linked: 151

  1. Ames, K. M. (1994). The Northwest Coast: Complex hunter-gatherers, ecology, and social evolution. Annual Review of Anthropology, 23, 209-229. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.10102 · DOI
  2. Apicella, C. L., Marlowe, F. W., Fowler, J. H., & Christakis, N. A. (2012). Social networks and cooperation in hunter-gatherers. Nature, 481(7382), 497-501. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10736 · DOI · Paper page
  3. Arnold, J. E. (1992). Complex hunter-gatherer-fishers of prehistoric California: Chiefs, specialists, and maritime adaptations of the Channel Islands. American Antiquity, 57(1), 60-84.
  4. Arnold, J. E., Sunell, S., Nigra, B. T., Bishop, K. J., Jones, T., & Bongers, J. (2016). Entrenched Disbelief: Complex Hunter-Gatherers and the Case for Inclusive Cultural Evolutionary Thinking. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 23(2), 448-499. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-015-9246-y · DOI
  5. Bailey, R. C., Head, G., Jenike, M., Owen, B., Rechtman, R., & Zechenter, E. (1989). Hunting and gathering in tropical rain forest: Is it possible? American Anthropologist, 91(1), 59-82. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.1989.91.1.02a00040 Bandy, M. S. (2004). Fissioning, Scalar Stress, and Social Evolution in Early Village Societies. American Anthropologist, 106(2), 322-333. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2004.106.2.322 · DOI
  6. Bartels, D., & Bartels, A. (1999). Khanti domestic and political organization. In Richard B. Lee & Richard Daly (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and gatherers (pp. 164-165). Cambridge University Press.
  7. Bergström, A., Stringer, C., Hajdinjak, M., Scerri, E. M. L., & Skoglund, P. (2021). Origins of modern human ancestry. Nature, 590(7845), 229-237. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03244-5 · DOI
  8. Beyer, H. O., & Barton, R. F. (1911). An Ifugao burial ceremony. Philippine Journal of Science, 6, 227- 252.
  9. Bird, D. W., Bird, R. B., Codding, B. F., & Zeanah, D. W. (2019). Variability in the organization and size of hunter-gatherer groups: Foragers do not live in small-scale societies. Journal of Human Evolution, 131, 96-108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2019.03.005 · DOI
  10. Birdsell, J. B. (1968). Some predictions for the Pleistocene based on equilibrium systems among recent hunter-gatherers. In Richard B. Lee & I. DeVore (Eds.), Man the hunter (pp. 229-240). Aldine De Gruyter.
  11. Boehm, C. (1997). Impact of the human egalitarian syndrome on Darwinian selection mechanics. American Naturalist, 150, 100-121. https://doi.org/10.1086/286052 · DOI
  12. Boehm, C. (1999). Hierarchy in the Forest. Harvard University Press.
  13. Boehm, C. (2008). Purposive social selection and the evolution of human altruism. Cross-Cultural Research, 42(4), 319-352. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069397108320422 · DOI
  14. Boehm, C. (2012b). Ancestral hierarchy and conflict. Science, 336(6083), 844-847. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1219961 · DOI
  15. Bowles, S., & Choi, J.-K. (2013). Coevolution of farming and private property during the early Holocene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110(22), 8830- 8835. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1212149110 · DOI
  16. Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (2022). Large-scale cooperation in small-scale foraging societies. Evolutionary Anthropology. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21944 · DOI
  17. Brace, S., Diekmann, Y., Booth, T. J., van Dorp, L., Faltyskova, Z., Rohland, N., Mallick, S., Olalde, I., Ferry, M., Michel, M., Oppenheimer, J., Broomandkhoshbacht, N., Stewardson, K., Martiniano, R., Walsh, S., Kayser, M., Charlton, S., Hellenthal, G., Armit, I., … Barnes, I. (2019). Ancient genomes indicate population replacement in Early Neolithic Britain. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 3(5), 765- 771. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0871-9 · DOI
  18. Braun, D. R., Harris, J. W. K., Levin, N. E., McCoy, J. T., Herries, A. I. R., Bamford, M. K., Bishop, L. C., Richmond, B. G., & Kibunjia, M. (2010). Early hominin diet included diverse terrestrial and aquatic animals 1.95 Ma in East Turkana, Kenya. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(22), 10002-10007. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1002181107 · DOI
  19. Chapman, A. M. (1982). Drama and power in a hunting society: The Selk'nam of Tierra del Fuego. Cambridge University Press.
  20. Charafeddine, R., Mercier, H., Clément, F., Kaufmann, L., Berchtold, A., Reboul, A., & Van der Henst, J. B. (2015). How Preschoolers Use Cues of Dominance to Make Sense of Their Social Environment. Journal of Cognition and Development, 16(4), 587-607. https://doi.org/10.1080/15248372.2014.926269 · DOI
  21. Compton, J. S. (2011). Pleistocene sea-level fluctuations and human evolution on the southern coastal plain of South Africa. Quarternary Science Reviews, 30(5-6), 506-527. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2010.12.012 · DOI
  22. Condon, R. G. (1983). Inuit behavior and seasonal change in the Canadian Arctic. UMI Research Press.
  23. Cosmides, L., & Tooby, J. (2013). Evolutionary psychology: New perspectives on cognition and motivation. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 201-229. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.121208.131628 · DOI
  24. Cunningham, A. J., Worthington, S., Venkataraman, V. V., & Wrangham, R. W. (2019). Do modern hunter-gatherers live in marginal habitats? Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 25, 584- 599. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.05.028 · DOI
  25. D'Errico, F., & Vanhaeren, M. (2015). Upper Paleolithic mortuary practices: Reflection of ethnic affiliation, social complexity, and cultural turnover. Death Rituals, Social Order and the Archaeology of Immortality in the Ancient World, 45-62. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781316014509.005 · DOI
  26. Dunham, Y. (2018). Mere Membership. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(9), 780-793. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.06.004 · DOI
  27. Elam, Y. (1979). Nomadism in Ankole as a substitute for rebellion. Africa, 49(2), 147-158.
  28. Erlandson, J. M. (2001). The archaeology of aquatic adaptations: Paradigms for a new millennium. Journal of Archaeological Research, 9(4), 287-350.
  29. Fisher, E. C., Bar-Matthews, M., Jerardino, A., & Marean, C. W. (2010). Middle and Late Pleistocene paleoscape modeling along the southern coast of South Africa. Quaternary Science Reviews, 29(11-12), 1382-1398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2010.01.015 · DOI
  30. Fisher, E. C., Cawthra, H. C., Esteban, I., Jerardino, A., Neumann, F. H., Oertle, A., Pargeter, J., Saktura, R. B., Szabó, K., Winkler, S., & Zohar, I. (2020). Coastal occupation and foraging during the last glacial maximum and early Holocene at Waterfall Bluff, eastern Pondoland, South Africa. Quaternary Research, 97, 1-41. https://doi.org/10.1017/qua.2020. · DOI
  31. Flannery, K. V., & Marcus, J. (2012). The creation of inequality. Harvard University Press.
  32. Formicola, V., Pettitt, P. B., Maggi, R., & Hedges, R. (2005). Tempo and mode of formation of the Late Epigravettian necropolis of Arene Candide cave (Italy): Direct radiocarbon evidence. Journal of Archaeological Science, 32(11), 1598-1602. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2005.04.013 · DOI
  33. Fourie, L. (1928). The Bushmen of south west Africa (C. H. L. Hahn (ed.)). Cape Times.
  34. Fry, D. P. (2007). Beyond war: The human potential for peace. Oxford University Press.
  35. Fry, D. P. (2013). War, peace, and human nature: The challenge of achieving scientific objectivity. In War, peace, and human nature: The convergence of evolutionary and cultural views (pp. 1-21). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof · DOI
  36. Fry, D. P., Keith, C. A., & Söderberg, P. (2020). Social complexity, inequality and war before farming: Congruence of comparative forager and archaeological data. In L. Moreau (Ed.), Social inequality before farming? Multidsciplinary approaches to the study of social organization in prehistoric and ethnographic hunter-gatherer-fisher societies (pp. 303-320). McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
  37. Garfield, Z. H., Hubbard, R. L., & Hagen, E. H. (2019). Evolutionary models of leadership: Tests and synthesis. Human Nature, 30(1), 23-58. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-019-09338-4 · DOI
  38. Garfield, Z. H., Syme, K. L., & Hagen, E. H. (2020). Universal and variable leadership dimensions across human societies. Evolution and Human Behavior, 41(5), 397-414. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2020.07.012 · DOI
  39. Gaudzinski, S., & Roebroeks, W. (2000). Adults only. Reindeer hunting at the Middle Palaeolithic site Salzgitter Lebenstedt, northern Germany. Journal of Human Evolution, 38(4), 497-521. https://doi.org/10.1006/jhev.1999.0359 · DOI
  40. Glowacki, L. (2020). The emergence of locally adaptive institutions: Insights from traditional social structures of East African pastoralists. BioSystems, 198, 104257. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystems.2020.104257 · DOI
  41. Glowacki, L., & Lew-Levy, S. (2022). How small-scale societies achieve large-scale cooperation. Current Opinion in Psychology, 44, 44-48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.08.026 · DOI
  42. Glowacki, L., & von Rueden, C. (2015). Leadership solves collective action problems in small-scale societies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 370, 20150010.
  43. Gopalan, S., Berl, R. E. W., Myrick, J. W., Garfield, Z. H., Reynolds, A. W., Bafens, B. K., Belbin, G., Mastoras, M., Williams, C., Daya, M., Negesh, A. N., Feldman, M. W., Hewlett, B. S., & Henn, B. M. (2022). Hunter-gatherer genomes reveal diverse demographic trajectories during the rise of farming in Eastern Africa. Current Biology, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2022.02.050 · DOI
  44. Gusinde, M. (1971). The Fireland Indians, vol. 1: The Selk'nam, on the life and thought of a hunting people of the Great Island of Tierra del Fuego. Human Relations Area Files.
  45. Hames, R. (2019). Pacifying hunter-gatherers. Human Nature, 30(2), 155-175. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-019-09340-w · DOI
  46. Hamilton, M. J., Milne, B. T., Walker, R. S., Burger, O., & Brown, J. H. (2007). The complex structure of hunter-gatherer social networks. Proceedings. Biological Sciences / The Royal Society, 274(1622), 2195-2202. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2007.0564 · DOI
  47. Hartley, T. (2019). The continuing evolution of ownership. PLoS ONE, 14(2), e0211871. https://doi.org/10.1037/021789 · DOI
  48. Hawkes, K., & Bird, R. B. (2002). Showing Off, Handicap Signaling, and the Evolution of Men's Work. Evolutionary Anthropology, 11(2), 58-67. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.20005 · DOI
  49. Hayden, B., & Cannon, A. (1982). The corporate group as an archaeological unit. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 1(2), 132-158. https://doi.org/10.1016/0278-4165(82)90018-6 · DOI
  50. Hayden, B., Eldridge, M., Eldridge, A., & Cannon, A. (1985). Complex hunter-gatherers in interior British Columbia. In D. T. Price & J. A. Brown (Eds.), Prehistoric hunter-gatherers: The emergence of complexity. Academic Press, Inc.
  51. Hayden, B., & Ryder, J. M. (1991). Prehistoric cultural collapse in the Lillooet area. American Antiquity, 56(1), 50-65.
  52. Headland, T. N. (1987). The wild yam question: How well could independent hunter-gatherers live in a tropical rain forest ecosystem? Human Ecology, 15(4), 463-491. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00888000 · DOI
  53. Headland, T. N., & Reid, L. A. (1989). Hunter-gatherers and their neighbors from prehistory to the present. Current Anthropology, 30(1), 43-66.
  54. Heinsohn, T. E. (2010). Marsupials as introduced species: Long-term anthropogenic expansion of the marsupial frontier and its implications for zoogeographic interpretation. Altered Ecologies (Terra Australis 32): Fire, Climate and Human Influence on Terrestrial Landscapes, 1893. https://doi.org/10.22459/ta32.11.2010. · DOI
  55. Hill, K. R., Walker, R. S., Bozicević, M., Eder, J., Headland, T., Hewlett, B., Hurtado, a M., Marlowe, F., Wiessner, P., & Wood, B. (2011). Co-residence patterns in hunter-gatherer societies show unique human social structure. Science (New York, N.Y.), 331(6022), 1286-1289. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1199071 · DOI · Paper page
  56. Hoffman, C. L. (1984). Punan foragers in the trading networks of Southeast Asia. In Carmel Shrire (Ed.), Past and present in hunter-gatherer studies (pp. 123-149). Academic Press.
  57. Hooper, P. L., Kaplan, H. S., & Boone, J. L. (2010). A theory of leadership in human cooperative groups. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 265, 633-646. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2010.05.034 · DOI
  58. Hrdy, S. B. (2009). Mothers and others: The evolutionary understandings of mutual understanding. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.16309/j.cnki.issn.1007- 1776.2003.03.004 · DOI
  59. Hutchinson, D. L., Norr, L., Schober, T., Marquardt, W. H., Walker, K. J., Newsom, L. A., & Scarry, C. M. (2016). The Calusa and prehistoric subsistence in central and south Gulf Coast Florida. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 41, 55-73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2015.10.004 · DOI
  60. Irons, W. (1974). Nomadism as a political adaptation: The case of the Yomut Turkmen. American Ethnologist, 1(4), 635-658. https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1974.1.4.02a00040 Isaac, B. L. (1990). Economy, ecology, and analogy: The !Kung San and the generalized foraging model. In K. B. Tankersley & B. L. Isaac (Eds.), Early Paleoindian Economies of Eastern North America (pp. 323-335). JAI Press. · DOI
  61. Jeffrey, J. L., & Lahr, M. M. (2020). Exploring fisher-forager complexity in an African context. In L. Moreau (Ed.), Social inequality before farming? Multidsciplinary approaches to the study of social organization in prehistoric and ethnographic hunter-gatherer-fisher societies (pp. 255-278).
  62. Jerardino, A., & Marean, C. W. (2010). Shellfish gathering, marine paleoecology and modern human behavior: Perspectives from cave PP13B, Pinnacle Point, South Africa. Journal of Human Evolution, 59(3-4), 412-424. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2010.07.003 · DOI
  63. Johnson, A. W., & Earle, T. (2000). The evolution of human societies: From foraging group to agrarian state. Stanford University Press.
  64. Johnson, G. A. (1982). Organizational structure and scalar stress. In C. Renfrew, M. Rowlands, & B. A. Segraves-Whallon (Eds.), Theory and explanation in archaeology (pp. 389-421). Academic Press.
  65. Johnson, S. L., Leedom, L. J., & Muhtadie, L. (2012). The dominance behavioral system and psychopathology: Evidence from self-report, observational, and biological studies. Psychological Bulletin, 138(4), 692-743. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027503 · DOI
  66. Junker, L. L. (2002). Economic specialization and inter-ethnic trade between foragers and farmers in the prehispanic Philippines. In K. D. Morrison & L. L. Junker (Eds.), Forager-traders in South and Southeast Asia (pp. 203-241). Cambridge University Press.
  67. Kaplan, H. S., Hooper, P. L., & Gurven, M. (2009). The evolutionary and ecological roots of human social organization. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1533), 3289-3299. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2009.0115 · DOI · Paper page
  68. Keller, H. M., Hodgkins, J. M., & Cleghorn, N. E. (2019). Nutritional stress and marine exploitation: Subsistence strategies at KEH-1, South Africa, during the Middle and Later Stone Age transition. Paleoanthropology Society Meeting Abstracts. https://doi.org/10.2307/281542. · DOI
  69. Krasnow, M. M., Delton, A. W., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2013). Meeting now suggests we will meet again: Implications for debates on the evolution of cooperation. Scientific Reports, 3, 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep01747 · DOI
  70. Layton, R., O'Hara, S., & Bilsborough, A. (2012). Antiquity and social functions of multilevel social organization among human hunter-gatherers. International Journal of Primatology, 33(5), 1215- 1245. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-012-9634-z · DOI
  71. Lee, Richard Borshay. (1972). !Kung spatial organization: An ecological and historical perspective. Human Ecology, 1(2), 125-147. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01531351 · DOI
  72. Lee, Richard Borshay. (1979a). Hunter-Gatherers in Process: The Kalahari Research Project 1963-1976. In Long-Term Field Research in Social Anthropology (pp. 303-321).
  73. Lee, Richard Borshay. (1979b). The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society. Cambridge University Press.
  74. Lee, Richard Borshay. (2018). Hunter-gatherers and human evolution: New light on old debates. Annual Review of Anthropology, 47, 513-531. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102116-041448 · DOI
  75. Lee, Richard Borshay, & DeVore, I. (1968a). Man the hunter. Aldine De Gruyter.
  76. Lee, Richard Borshay, & DeVore, I. (1968b). Problems in the study of hunters and gatherers. In Richard Borshay Lee & I. DeVore (Eds.), Man the hunter (pp. 3-12).
  77. Lewin, R. (1988). New views emerge on hunters and gatherers. Science, 240(4856), 1146-1148. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.240.4856.1146 · DOI
  78. Llewellyn, K. N., & Hoebel, E. A. (1941). The Cheyenne way: Conflict and case law in primitive jurisprudence. University of Oklahoma Press.
  79. Maher, L. A., Richter, T., & Stock, J. T. (2012). The Pre-Natufian Epipaleolithic: Long-term Behavioral Trends in the Levant. Evolutionary Anthropology, 21(2), 69-81. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21307 · DOI
  80. Malmström, H., Gilbert, M. T. P., Thomas, M. G., Brandström, M., Storå, J., Molnar, P., Andersen, P. K., Bendixen, C., Holmlund, G., Götherström, A., & Willerslev, E. (2009). Ancient DNA reveals lack of continuity between Neolithic hunter-gatherers and contemporary Scandinavians. Current Biology, 19(20), 1758-1762. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2009.09.017 · DOI
  81. Marean, C. W. (2014). The origins and significance of coastal resource use in Africa and Western Eurasia. Journal of Human Evolution, 77, 17-40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2014.02.025 · DOI
  82. Marean, C. W. (2016). The transition to foraging for dense and predictable resources and its impact on the evolution of modern humans. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 371(1698). https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0239 · DOI
  83. Marean, C. W., Bar-Matthews, M., Bernatchez, J., Fisher, E., Goldberg, P., Herries, A. I. R., Jacobs, Z., Jerardino, A., Karkanas, P., Minichillo, T., Nilssen, P. J., Thompson, E., Watts, I., & Williams, H. M. (2007). Early human use of marine resources and pigment in South Africa during the Middle Pleistocene. Nature, 449(7164), 905-908. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06204 · DOI · Paper page
  84. Marlowe, F. W. (2010). The Hadza: Hunter-gatherers of Tanzania. University of California Press.
  85. Marquardt, W. H. (2014). Tracking the Calusa: A retrospective. Southeastern Archaeology, 33(1), 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1179/sea.2014.33.1.001 · DOI
  86. Marshall, L. (1965). The !Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert. In J. L. Gibbs, Jr. (Ed.), Peoples of Africa (pp. 243-278).
  87. Marshall, L. (1976). The !Kung of Nyae Nyae. Harvard University Press.
  88. Mauss, M. (1950). Seasonal variations of the Eskimo: A study in social morphology. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
  89. McBrearty, S., & Brooks, A. S. (2000). The revolution that wasn't: a new interpretation of the origin of modern human behavior. Journal of Human Evolution, 39(5), 453-563. https://doi.org/10.1006/jhev.2000.0435 · DOI · Paper page
  90. Migliano, A. B., Battiston, F., Viguier, S., Page, A. E., Dyble, M., Schlaepfer, R., Smith, D., Astete, L., Ngales, M., Gomez-Gardenes, J., Latora, V., & Vinicius, L. (2020). Hunter-gatherer multilevel sociality accelerates cumulative cultural evolution. Science Advances, 6, eaax5913. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aax5913 · DOI
  91. Migliano, A. B., Page, A. E., Gómez-Gardeñes, J., Salali, G. D., Viguier, S., Dyble, M., Thompson, J., Chaudhary, N., Smith, D., Strods, J., MacE, R., Thomas, M. G., Latora, V., & Vinicius, L. (2017). Characterization of hunter-gatherer networks and implications for cumulative culture. Nature Human Behaviour, 1(2), 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-016-0043 · DOI
  92. Moreau, L. (Ed.). (2020). Social inequality before farming? Multidisciplinary approaches to the study of social organization in prehistoric and ethnographic hunter-gatherer-fisher societies. McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. http://www.academia.edu/download/61076942/Germonpre_et_al_Paleodogs_and_inequality_UPal_ preprint20191031-76217-m0qf1m.pdf
  93. Murdock, G. P. (1968). The current status of the world's hunting and gathering peoples. In Richard Borshay Lee & I. DeVore (Eds.), Man the hunter. Aldine De Gruyter.
  94. Ortmann, A. L., & Kidder, T. R. (2013). Building Mound A at Poverty Point, Louisiana: Monumental public architecture, ritual practice, and implications for hunter-gatherer complexity. Geoarchaeology, 28(1), 66-86. https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.21430 · DOI
  95. Pate, F. D. (2006). Hunter-gatherer social complexity at Roonka Flat, South Australia. In The Social Archaeology of Australian Indigenous …. https://doi.org/10.13140/2.1.2496.8648 · DOI
  96. Pettitt, P. (2010). The Palaeolithic origins of human burial. In The Palaeolithic Origins of Human Burial. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203813300 · DOI
  97. Porter, C. C., & Marlowe, F. W. (2007). How marginal are forager habitats? Journal of Archaeological Science, 34(1), 59-68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2006.03.014 · DOI
  98. Price, M., & Hongo, H. (2019). The archaeology of pig domestication in Eurasia. Journal of Archaeological Research, 0123456789. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-019-09142-9 · DOI
  99. Price, T. D., & Brown, J. A. (Eds.). (1985). Prehistoric hunter-gatherers: The emergence of complexity. Academic Press, Inc.
  100. Putnam, P. (1948). The Pygmies of the Ituri Forest. In Carleton S. Coon (Ed.), A reader in general anthropology (pp. 322-342).
  101. Rambo, A. T. (1988). Why are the Semang? Ecology and ethnogenesis of aboriginal groups in peninsular Malaysia. In A. T. Rambo, K. Gollogly, & K. Hutterer (Eds.), Ethnic diversity and the control of natural resources in Southeast Asia. Center for South and Southeast Asia.
  102. Rivollat, M., Jeong, C., Schiffels, S., Küçükkalıpçı, İ., Pemonge, M. H., Rohrlach, A. B., Alt, K. W., Binder, D., Friederich, S., Ghesquière, E., Gronenborn, D., Laporte, L., Lefranc, P., Meller, H., Réveillas, H., Rosenstock, E., Rottier, S., Scarre, C., Soler, L., … Haak, W. (2020). Ancient genome-wide DNA from France highlights the complexity of interactions between Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and Neolithic farmers. Science Advances, 6(22), eaaz5344. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5344 · DOI
  103. Rodríguez-Hidalgo, A., Saladié, P., Ollé, A., Arsuaga, J. L., Bermúdez de Castro, J. M., & Carbonell, E. (2017). Human predatory behavior and the social implications of communal hunting based on evidence from the TD10.2 bison bone bed at Gran Dolina (Atapuerca, Spain). Journal of Human Evolution, 105, 89-122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2017.01.007 · DOI
  104. Roscoe, P. (2002). The hunters and gatherers of New Guinea. Current Anthropology, 43(1), 153-162. https://doi.org/10.1086/338289 · DOI
  105. Roscoe, P. (2006). Fish, game, and the foundations of complexity in forager society: The evidence from New Guinea. Cross-Cultural Research, 40(1), 29-46. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069397105282432 · DOI
  106. Roscoe, P. (2016). The fortunes of foragers in colonial and post-colonial New Guinea. In V. Reyes-García & A. Pyhälä (Eds.), Hunter-gatherers in a changing world. Springer.
  107. Scerri, E. M. L., Thomas, M. G., Manica, A., Gunz, P., Stock, J. T., Stringer, C., Grove, M., Groucutt, H. S., Timmermann, A., Rightmire, G. P., Errico, F., Tryon, C. A., Drake, N. A., Brooks, A. S., Dennell, R. W., Durbin, R., Henn, B. M., Lee-thorp, J., Petraglia, M. D., … Chikhi, L. (2018). Did our species evolve in subdivided populations across Africa, and why does it matter? Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 33(8), 582-594. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2018.05.005 · DOI
  108. Scheidel, W. (2017). The great leveler: Violence and the history of inequality from the stone age to the twenty-first century. Princeton University Press.
  109. Schulting, R. J., Mannermaa, K., Tarasov, P. E., Higham, T., Ramsey, C. B., Khartanovich, V., Moiseyev, V., Gerasimov, D., O'Shea, J., & Weber, A. (2022). Radiocarbon dating from Yuzhniy Oleniy Ostrov cemetery reveals complex human responses to socio-ecological stress during the 8.2 ka cooling event. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 6, 155-162. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01628-4 · DOI
  110. Scott, J. C. (2009). The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia. https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2013.791444 · DOI
  111. Scott, J. C. (2017). Against the grain: A deep history of the earliest states. Yale University Press.
  112. Sealy, J. (2006). Diet, mobility, and settlement pattern among Holocene hunter-gatherers in southernmost Africa. Current Anthropology, 47(4), 569-595. https://doi.org/10.1086/504163 · DOI
  113. Shugar, D. H., Walker, I. J., Lian, O. B., Eamer, J. B. R., Neudorf, C., McLaren, D., & Fedje, D. (2014). Post-glacial sea-level change along the Pacific coast of North America. Quaternary Science Reviews, 97, 170-192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.05.022 · DOI
  114. Sikora, M., Seguin-Orlando, A., Sousa, V. C., Albrechtsen, A., Korneliussen, T., Ko, A., Rasmussen, S., Dupanloup, I., Nigst, P. R., Bosch, M. D., Renaud, G., Allentoft, M. E., Margaryan, A., Vasilyev, S. V., Veselovskaya, E. V., Borutskaya, S. B., Deviese, T., Comeskey, D., Higham, T., … Willerslev, E. (2017). Ancient genomes show social and reproductive behaviors of early Upper Paleolithic foragers. Science, 358(6363), 659-662.
  115. Singh, M. (2018). The cultural evolution of shamanism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 41, e66. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X17001893 · DOI
  116. Singh, M., & Garfield, Z. H. (2022). Evidence of third-party mediation but not punishment in Mentawai justice. Nature Human Behaviour. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-022-01341-7 · DOI
  117. Smaldino, P. E. (2019). Social identity and cooperation in cultural evolution. Behavioural Processes, 161(July 2017), 108-116. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2017.11.015 · DOI
  118. Smith, B. D. (2011). General patterns of niche construction and the management of "wild" plant and animal resources by small-scale pre-industrial societies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 366(1566), 836-848. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2010.0253 · DOI
  119. Smith, D., Schlaepfer, P., Major, K., Dyble, M., Page, A. E., Thompson, J., Chaudhary, N., Salali, G. D., MacE, R., Astete, L., Ngales, M., Vinicius, L., & Migliano, A. B. (2017). Cooperation and the evolution of hunter-gatherer storytelling. Nature Communications, 8(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-02036-8 · DOI
  120. Smith, E. A., & Choi, J.-K. (2007). The emergence of inequality in small-scale societies: Simple scenarios and agent-based simulations. In T. Kohler & S. van der Leeuw (Eds.), The model-based archaeology of socionatural systems (pp. 105-119). School for Advanced Research Press.
  121. Smith, E. A., & Codding, B. F. (2021). Ecological variation and institutionalized inequality in hunter- gatherer societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118(13), e2016134118. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2016134118 · DOI
  122. Smith, E. A., Hill, K., Marlowe, F., Nolin, D., Wiessner, P., Gurven, M., Bowles, S., Mulder, M. B., Hertz, T., & Bell, A. (2010). Wealth transmission and inequality among hunter-gatherers. Current Anthropology, 51(1), 19-34. https://doi.org/10.1086/648530 · DOI
  123. Snir, A., Nadel, D., Groman-Yaroslavski, I., Melamed, Y., Sternberg, M., Bar-Yosef, O., & Weiss, E. (2015). The origin of cultivation and proto-weeds, long before neolithic farming. PLoS ONE, 10(7), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0131422 · DOI
  124. Solway, J. S., & Lee, R. B. (1990). Foragers, genuine or spurious? Current Anthropology, 31(2), 109-146.
  125. Stojanowski, C. M., & Knudson, K. J. (2011). Biogeochemical inferences of mobility of early Holocene fisher-foragers from the Southern Sahara Desert. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 146(1), 49-61. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.21542 · DOI
  126. Testart, A. (1982). The significance of food storage among hunter-gatherers: Residence patterns, population densities, and social inequalities. Current Anthropology, 23(5), 523. https://doi.org/10.1086/202894 · DOI
  127. Thompson, J. C., Wright, D. K., & Ivory, S. J. (2021). The emergence and intensification of early hunter- gatherer niche construction. Evolutionary Anthropology, 30(1), 17-27.
  128. Thompson, V. D., Marquardt, W. H., Savarese, M., Walker, K. J., Newsom, L. A., Lulewicz, I., Lawres, N. R., Roberts Thompson, A. D., Bacon, A. R., & Walser, C. A. (2020). Ancient engineering of fish capture and storage in southwest Florida. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117(15), 8374-8381. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1921708117 · DOI · Paper page
  129. Thompson, V. D., Marquardt, W. H., Walker, K. J., Thompson, A. D. R., & Newsom, L. A. (2018). Collective action, state building, and the rise of the Calusa, southwest Florida, USA. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 51(September 2017), 28-44. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2018.05.003 · DOI
  130. Thomson, D. F. (1939). The seasonal factor in human culture: Illustrated from the life of a contemporary nomadic group. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society, 5, 209-221.
  131. Trinkaus, E. (2005). The adiposity paradox in the Middle Danubian Gravettian. Anthropologie (Brno), 43(2), 263-271.
  132. Tryon, C. A., Faith, J. T., Peppe, D. J., Beverly, E. J., Blegen, N., Blumenthal, S. A., Chritz, K. L., Driese, S. G., Patterson, D., & Sharp, W. D. (2016). The Pleistocene prehistory of the Lake Victoria basin. Quaternary International, 404, 100-114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.11.073 · DOI
  133. Turnbull, C. M. (1965). The Mbuti Pygmies: An Ethnographic Survey. In Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History (Vol. 50). The American Museum of Natural History.
  134. Vanhaeren, M., & d'Errico, F. (2005). Grave goods from the Saint-Germain-la-Rivière burial: Evidence for social inequality in the Upper Palaeolithic. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology, 24(2), 117-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2005.01.001 · DOI
  135. Verdu, P., Austerlitz, F., Estoup, A., Vitalis, R., Georges, M., Théry, S., Froment, A., Le Bomin, S., Gessain, A., Hombert, J. M., Van der Veen, L., Quintana-Murci, L., Bahuchet, S., & Heyer, E. (2009). Origins and genetic diversity of pygmy hunter-gatherers from Western Central Africa. Current Biology, 19(4), 312-318. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2008.12.049 · DOI
  136. Vermeersch, P. M., & Van Neer, W. (2015). Nile behaviour and Late Palaeolithic humans in Upper Egypt during the Late Pleistocene. Quaternary Science Reviews, 130, 155-167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2015.03.025 · DOI
  137. von Rueden, C. (2020). Making and unmaking egalitarianism in small-scale human societies. Current Opinion in Psychology, 33(October), 167-171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.07.037 · DOI
  138. Waelbroeck, C., Labeyrie, L., Michel, E., Duplessy, J. C., McManus, J. F., Lambeck, K., Balbon, E., & Labracherie, M. (2002). Sea-level and deep water temperature changes derived from benthic foraminifera isotopic records. Quaternary Science Reviews, 21(1-3), 295-305. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-3791(01)00101-9 · DOI
  139. Walker, R. S., Wichmann, S., Mailund, T., & Atkisson, C. J. (2012). Cultural phylogenetics of the Tupi language family in lowland South America. PLoS ONE, 7(4), e35025. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0035025 · DOI
  140. Wengrow, D., & Graeber, D. (2015). Farewell to the "childhood of man": Ritual, seasonality, and the origins of inequality. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21(3), 597-619. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12247 · DOI
  141. Wengrow, D., & Graeber, D. (2018). "Many Seasons Ago": Slavery and Its Rejection among Foragers on the Pacific Coast of North America. American Anthropologist, 120(2), 237-249. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.12969 · DOI
  142. White, C., & Peterson, N. (1969). Ethnographic Interpretations of the Prehistory of Western Arnhem Land. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 25(1), 45-67.
  143. Whiten, A., & Erdal, D. (2012). The human socio-cognitive niche and its evolutionary origins. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 367(1599), 2119-2129. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2012.0114 · DOI · Paper page
  144. Wiessner, P. (1994). Pathways of the past: !Kung San hxaro exchange and history. In M. Bollig & F. Klees (Eds.), Überlebensstrategien in Afrika (pp. 101-124).
  145. Wiessner, P. (2005). Norm enforcement among the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen. Human Nature, 16(2), 115-145. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-005-1000-9 · DOI
  146. Wiessner, P. (2014). Embers of society: Firelight talk among the Ju/'hoansi Bushmen. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(39), 14027-14035. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1404212111 · DOI · Paper page
  147. Will, M., Kandel, A. W., Kyriacou, K., & Conard, N. J. (2016). An evolutionary perspective on coastal adaptations by modern humans during the Middle Stone Age of Africa. Quaternary International, 404, 68-86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2015.10.021 · DOI
  148. Wood, B. M., Millar, R. S., Wright, N., Baumgartner, J., Holmquist, H., & Kiffner, C. (2021). Hunter- Gatherers in context: Mammal community composition in a northern Tanzania landscape used by Hadza foragers and Datoga pastoralists. PLoS ONE, 16(5 May), 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251076 · DOI
  149. Woodburn, J. (1982). Egalitarian societies. Man, 17(3), 431-451.
  150. Wrangham, R. W., & Glowacki, L. (2012). Intergroup aggression in chimpanzees and war in nomadic hunter-gatherers: evaluating the chimpanzee model. Human Nature, 23(1), 5-29. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-012-9132-1 · DOI
  151. Yellen, J. E., Brooks, A. S., Helgren, D. M., Tappen, M., Ambrose, S. H., Bonnefille, R., Feathers, J. K., Goodfriend, G., Ludwig, K. R., Renne, P. R., & Stewart, K. (2005). The archaeology of Aduma Middle Stone Age sites in the Awash Valley, Ethiopia. PaleoAnthropology, 2005(10), 25-100.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Singh, M., & Glowacki, L.
Affiliations
  • Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (FR)
  • Boston University (US)
Corresponding author
Singh, Manvir
ORCID
Venue
Evolution and Human Behavior
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2022-09
Volume
43
Issue
5
Pages
418-431
ISSN
1090-5138 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2022.07.003
OpenAlex
W4288458085
Cited by
157
References
6
Citations by year
2026: 33 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 41 · 2023: 30 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 11
FWCI
142.83
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Evolution and Human Behavior (publishedVersion)
  • HAL (submittedVersion)
  • Toulouse 1 Capitole Publications (Université Toulouse I Capitole) (submittedVersion)
  • OSF Preprints (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
  • EcoEvoRxiv (submittedVersion)
  • EcoEvoRxiv (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-17-EUR-0010)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Language and cultural evolution
  • Social Sciences › Anthropology › Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
Keywords
Late Pleistocene, social organization, hunter-gatherers, Middle Stone Age, social inequality, political stratification, sedentism, large-scale cooperation, resource management, psychological adjustment

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review