Domestication interests us as the most momentous change in Holocene human history. Why did it operate on so few wild species, in so few geographic areas? Why did people adopt it at all, why did they adopt it when they did, and how did it spread? The answers to these questions determined the remaking of the modern world, as farmers spread at the expense of hunter-gatherers and of other farmers.

/pdf/evolution-consequences-and-future-of-plant-and-animal-c1ew0rpdox.pdf

Evolution, consequences and future of plant and animal domestication

The intention of this work is to show that European expansion not only transformed the historical trajectory of non-European societies but also reconstituted the historical accounts of these societies before European intervention. It asserts that anthropology must pay more attention to history.

Europe and the People without History

In constructing improved models of human behavior, both experimental and behavioral economists have increasingly turned to evolutionary theory for insights into human psychology and preferences. Unfortunately, the existing genetic evolutionary approaches can explain neither the degree of prosociality (altruism and altruistic punishment) observed in humans, nor the patterns of variation in these behaviors across different behavioral domains and social groups. Ongoing misunderstandings about why certain models work, what they predict, and what the place is of “group selection” in evolutionary theory have hampered the use of insights from biology and anthropology. This paper clarifies some of these issues and proposes an approach to the evolution of prosociality rooted in the interaction between cultural and genetic transmission. I explain how, in contrast to non-cultural species, the details of our evolved cultural learning capacities (e.g., imitative abilities) create the conditions for the cultural evolution of prosociality. By producing multiple behavioral equilibria, including group-beneficial equilibria, cultural evolution endogenously generates a mechanism of equilibrium selection that can favor prosociality. Finally, in the novel social environments left in the wake of these cultural evolutionary processes, natural selection is likely to favor prosocial genes that would not be expected in a purely genetic approach. © 2003 Published by Elsevier B.V.

/pdf/cultural-group-selection-coevolutionary-processes-and-large-58y9sva2i2.pdf

Cultural group selection, coevolutionary processes and large-scale cooperation

How effectively business deals with the challenges of sustainability will define its success for decades to come. Current sustainability strategies have three major deficiencies: they do not directly focus on the customer, they do not recognize the looming threats from rising global over-consumption, and they do not take a holistic approach. We present a framework for a customer-centric approach to sustainability. This approach recasts the sustainability metric to emphasize the outcomes of business actions measured holistically in term of environmental, personal and economic well-being of the consumer. We introduce the concept of mindful consumption (MC) as the guiding principle in this approach. MC is premised on a consumer mindset of caring for self, for community, and for nature, that translates behaviorally into tempering the self-defeating excesses associated with acquisitive, repetitive and aspirational consumption. We also make the business case for fostering mindful consumption, and illustrate how the marketing function can be harnessed to successfully implement the customer-centric approach to sustainability.

/pdf/mindful-consumption-a-customer-centric-approach-to-4cfsyegmls.pdf

Mindful consumption: a customer-centric approach to sustainability

Ecologists have long recognized that some species, by virtue of the key roles they play in the overall structure and functioning of an ecosystem, are essential to its integrity; these are known as keystone species. Similarly, in human cultures everywhere, there are plants and animals that form the contextual underpinnings of a culture, as reflected in their fundamental roles in diet, as materials, or in medicine. In addition, these species often feature prominently in the language, ceremonies, and narratives of native peoples and can be considered cultural icons. Without these "cultural keystone species," the societies they support would be completely different. An obvious example is western red-cedar (Thuja plicata) for Northwest Coast cultures of North America. Often prominent elements of local ecosystems, cultural keystone species may be used and harvested in large quantities and intensively managed for quality and productivity. Given that biological conservation and ecological restoration embody human cultures as crucial components, one approach that may improve success in overall conservation or restoration efforts is to recognize and focus on cultural keystone species. In this paper, we explore the concept of cultural keystone species, describe similarities to and differences from ecological keystone species, present examples from First Nations cultures of British Columbia, and discuss the application of this concept in ecological restoration and conservation initiatives.

Cultural Keystone Species: Implications for Ecological Conservation and Restoration

The Chumash of the Santa Barbara Channel region were among the most economically and politically complex hunter–gatherer cultures of the New World. In recent decades, rich ethnohistorical documents pertaining to Chumash culture were analyzed, thus providing an excellent foundation for understanding the simple chiefdom that was in place as explorers and missionaries arrived in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Current archaeological research on the Channel Islands focuses on the emergence of ranked society in Chumash prehistory, with special emphasis on political developments and environmental stresses that contributed to cultural evolution. A wide range of data acquired from the Channel Islands illuminates a new model of the rise of complexity. This model of chiefdom emergence is based on population-resource imbalances, political opportunism, and the manipulation of labor by rising elites. Diverse lines of evidence must be employed to evaluate the timing, causes, and consequences of increasing complexity.

Complex Hunter-Gatherer-Fishers of Prehistoric California: Chiefs, Specialists, and Maritime Adaptations of the Channel Islands

Archaeologists' reconstructions of paths to complexity have all too often excluded complex hunter-gatherers. However, recent theoretical contributions and long-term field research programs in several regions of the world have now significantly advanced our understanding of complex hunter-gatherers. A discussion of definitions of complexity and a review of current models of the emergence of complexity provide a framework for analyses of complex hunter-gatherers and important cultural phenomena such as sedentism, political integration, prestige economies, feasting, and ideology.

The archaeology of complex hunter-gatherers

Before the Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native Californians

Labor and the rise of complex hunter-gatherers

Advanced watercraft were in use at historic contact among a number of the most complex hunting-gathering societies of western North America, including the Chumash and the Nootkans. Though anthropologists often relegate technological innovations to very minor roles as stimuli toward social evolution and power inequities, archaeological analyses of long-term cultural change cannot afford to ignore the many social, symbolic, and practical implications of major innovations in transportation. Analysis of the linkages between watercraft and political, ideological, and economic systems reveals a strong association between social complexity and transportation of high capacity and range among maritime peoples.

Jeanne E. Arnold

Papers

Complex Hunter-Gatherer-Fishers of Prehistoric California: Chiefs, Specialists, and Maritime Adaptations of the Channel Islands

The archaeology of complex hunter-gatherers

Before the Wilderness: Environmental Management by Native Californians

Labor and the rise of complex hunter-gatherers

Transportation Innovation and Social Complexity among Maritime Hunter-Gatherer Societies