Agency and Adaptation: New Directions in Evolutionary Anthropology

Abstract

Neo-Darwinian evolution is widely acknowledged as the key framework for understanding the form and function of living systems, including myriad aspects of animal behavior. Yet extensions to human behavior and society are perennially challenged; debates are vociferous and seemingly irresolvable, and evolutionary approaches to human behavior are marginalized within much of anthropology and other social sciences. This review explores this contested terrain, arguing that although many critiques of evolutionary analyses of behavior are faulty, some valid concerns must be addressed. Human agency, behavioral plasticity, and the partial autonomy of cultural and historical change present real challenges to the standard evolutionary framework. However, several additions to the standard framework currently employed by evolutionary anthropologists and others address these concerns and provide a more comprehensive understanding of human behavioral evolution and adaptation. These additions include phenotypic adaptation, cultural transmission, gene-culture coevolution, and niche construction.

Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere

“…Though human capacity for cooperative behavior is exceptional, so is human cognitive capacity and behavioral flexibility (Roth andDicke 2005, Brown et al 2011a). As a result, human agency and individuality of choice are key determinants of the emergent behavior of sociocultural systems and groups, such that culturally inherited social structures and behaviors alone are incapable of fully predicting individual, group, or societal behavior (Macy and Willer 2002, Brown et al 2011a, Gelfand et al 2011, Smith 2013b. Further, humans have a capacity for shared intentionality not present in any other species (fourth-order intentionality): the ability to interpret the intentions of others and to act cooperatively with these intentions, enabling individual choices to scale up to larger group decisions (Dunbar 1998, Tomasello et al 2005, Dean et al 2012).…”

A systematic review of post-marital residence patterns in prehistoric hunter-gatherers

“…After hunter-gathers have substantial contact with or transition into horticultural, pastoral, or agricultural societies, men can usually store wealth outside of their persons in land, livestock, large physical objects, and/or geographically fixed resources that are not practically portable or not portable at all. To the extent that wealth is a critical factor in selecting a husband, these methods of storing wealth may shift the leverage in marriage to men and lead to the dominance of patrilocality (133)(134)(135). In fact, in 1881, Morgan (136) noted that in human evolution, once people stored wealth in property, descent systems became patrilineal.…”

Human behavioural ecology and Pacific archaeology

“…Similarly, agency‐based accounts of how elites, by striving for power and prestige, facilitate the construction of monumental architecture in particular social and ritual contexts (e.g. Kahn & Kirch ; Kolb ) work at a different analytical scale than HBE explanations, such as CST, which can help provide explanations for why monument construction occurs at all (Kuhn : 566; Smith ). Not only are these different scales of analysis not at odds, but together they can provide more complete and complementary accounts of the past.…”