We have known for some time that complex societies are more likely to have land tenure systems based on private rights and less likely to have communal ownership. Less understood is why. More specifically, what are the mechanisms to explain why complex societies have more private property? What are the adaptive advantages of one system rather than the other? Conceptualizing and coding land tenure systems as a "bundle of rights," this worldwide cross-cultural study suggests that Acheson's (2015) economic defendability theory in conjunction with some environmental stressors, such as drought, may help us understand cross-cultural variation in land tenure systems. Our results have evolutionary implications. They suggest that if property rights were claimed, communal property systems would have been the default system for any society having substantial degrees of hunting, gathering, or herdable animals. Agriculture by itself is not a strong predictor of private land rights, although irrigation agriculture is. [land tenure systems, defendability, resource stress, cross-cultural] RESUMEN Hemos sabido por algún tiempo que las sociedades complejas tienen más probabilidad de tener sistemas de tenencia de la tierra basados en derechos de propiedad privada y menos probabilidad de tener propiedad comunal. Menos entendido es el por qué. Más específicamente, ¿cuáles son los mecanismos para explicar por qué las sociedades complejas tienen más propiedades privadas? ¿Cuáles son las ventajas adaptativas de un sistema en lugar del otro? Al conceptualizar y codificar los sistemas de tenencia de la tierra como un "conjunto de derechos," este estudio transcultural sugiere que la teoría de la defendibilidad económica de Acheson (2015) junto con algunos factores que causan estrés ambiental, como la sequía, pueden ayudar a entender la variación transcultural en sistemas de tenencia de la tierra. Nuestros resultados tienen implicaciones evolucionarias. Ellos sugieren que, si los derechos de propiedad fueron reclamados, los sistemas de propiedad comunal podrían haber sido el sistema por defecto para cualquier sociedad teniendo grados sustanciales de caza, recolección o animales de pastoreo. La agricultura por sí misma no es un predictor fuerte de los derechos de propiedad privada de la tierra, aunque la agricultura con irrigación lo es. [sistemas de tenencia de la tierra, defendibilidad, estrés en los recursos, transcultural] F or more than two millennia, beginning from Greek and Roman times, scholars have been intensely interested in conditions that led to the origin of different property regimes (Engels and Hunt [1884] 2010; Rudmin 1988, 1992a). As summarized by Rudmin (1988), much of the debate concerned whether landed property should be held privately by household heads and entitled heirs or commu
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