Resources and reproductive success in women with an example from the Kipsigis of Kenya

Mulder, Monique Borgerhoff

doi:10.1111/j.1469-7998.1987.tb03722.x

Cited by 39 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…1 and SI Appendix, Figs. S3-S5) (35). The extent of temporal variations in resource availability is based on rainfall-based maize yield estimates for precontact farmers in what is now southwestern Colorado over the period 600 to 1300 (36) (SI Appendix, Fig.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultivation of cereals by the first farmers was not more productive than foraging

Bowles

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

123

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Did foragers become farmers because cultivation of crops was simply a better way to make a living? If so, what is arguably the greatest ever revolution in human livelihoods is readily explained. To answer the question, I estimate the caloric returns per hour of labor devoted to foraging wild species and cultivating the cereals exploited by the first farmers, using data on foragers and landabundant hand-tool farmers in the ethnographic and historical record, as well as archaeological evidence. A convincing answer must account not only for the work of foraging and cultivation but also for storage, processing, and other indirect labor, and for the costs associated with the delayed nature of agricultural production and the greater exposure to risk of those whose livelihoods depended on a few cultivars rather than a larger number of wild species. Notwithstanding the considerable uncertainty to which these estimates inevitably are subject, the evidence is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the productivity of the first farmers exceeded that of early Holocene foragers. Social and demographic aspects of farming, rather than its productivity, may have been essential to its emergence and spread. Prominent among these aspects may have been the contribution of farming to population growth and to military prowess, both promoting the spread of farming as a livelihood.labor productivity | technological change | time discount | certainty equivalent A parsimonious and widely held explanation of the advent of farming is that at the end of the Pleistocene, hunter-gatherers took up cultivation of crops to raise (or prevent a decline) in their material living standards (1-3). In this view, the initial cultivation and subsequent domestication of cereals beginning about 12 millennia ago, and the somewhat later domestication of animals (4, 5), is emblematic of the economic model of technical progress and its diffusion (6). Like the bow and arrow, the steam engine or the computer, in this model cultivating plants rather than foraging wild species is said to have raised the productivity of human labor, encouraging adoption of the new technology and allowing farming populations to expand.Population did increase following domestication (7), but evidence that many of the first farmers were smaller and less healthy than early Holocene foragers casts doubt on improved material living standards as the cause (8). The findings reported here-that the first farmers were probably no more productive than the foragers they replaced, and may have been considerably less productive-favors a social rather than technological explanation of the Holocene revolution, one based on the demographic, political, and other consequences of adopting farming as a livelihood (9-14). The evidence is also consistent with the long-term persistence in many populations of "low-level food production" without a transition to a full reliance on farming (15, 16), as well as with recent evidence that the domestication of cereals was not a one-off event but rather a process e...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultivation of cereals by the first farmers was not more productive than foraging

Bowles

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

123

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“…There is a considerable literature on a positive correlation between wealth and reproductive success, based both on empirical evidence (Hull & Hull 1977;Boone 1986;Hughes 1986;Mulder 1987;Mace 1996) and evolutionary theory (Fisher 1958;Beauchamp 1994;Mace 1998). In modern Gabbra pastoralists in Kenya, residual fertility (a measure of the number of children a person has had relative to others in that population of the same age and sex) was found to correlate significantly with wealth: from ca K0.5 for the poorest to ca 1 for the wealthiest.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…500 000C), well above documented population movements of the early middle ages (see, for example, Heather (1991)). An alternative explanation would be provided by an apartheid-like situation (Woolf 2004) in which elevated social and economic status grant higher reproductive success to the immigrants when compared to the native population and a degree of postmigration reproductive isolation is maintained among ethnic groups for several generations (Hughes 1986;Mulder 1987;Mace 1996). Under a model of cross-generation ethnic apartheid it is expected that the chromosomes of the advantaged ethnic group would increase in overall frequency.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for an apartheid-like social structure in early Anglo-Saxon England

2006

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The role of migration in the Anglo-Saxon transition in England remains controversial. Archaeological and historical evidence is inconclusive, but current estimates of the contribution of migrants to the English population range from less than 10 000 to as many as 200 000. In contrast, recent studies based on Y-chromosome variation posit a considerably higher contribution to the modern English gene pool (50-100%). Historical evidence suggests that following the Anglo-Saxon transition, people of indigenous ethnicity were at an economic and legal disadvantage compared to those having Anglo-Saxon ethnicity. It is likely that such a disadvantage would lead to differential reproductive success. We examine the effect of differential reproductive success, coupled with limited intermarriage between distinct ethnic groups, on the spread of genetic variants. Computer simulations indicate that a social structure limiting intermarriage between indigenous Britons and an initially small Anglo-Saxon immigrant population provide a plausible explanation of the high degree of Continental male-line ancestry in England.

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“…[9][10][11]). Such patterns are neither restricted to agricultural and pastoral populations [12], nor indeed to men [13]. Despite contrary expectations for modern populations, derived from the fact that the European demographic transition started and was most pronounced among the wealthy [14,15], recent analyses confirm the importance for successful reproduction of both material resources [16][17][18], and the training whereby such resources are attained (such as formal education [19]).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Understanding the nature of wealth and its effects on human fitness

Mulder

Beheim

2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Studying fitness consequences of variable behavioural, physiological and cognitive traits in contemporary populations constitutes the specific contribution of human behavioural ecology to the study of human diversity. Yet, despite 30 years of evolutionary anthropological interest in the determinants of fitness, there exist few principled investigations of the diverse sources of wealth that might reveal selective forces during recent human history. To develop a more holistic understanding of how selection shapes human phenotypic traits, be these transmitted by genetic or cultural means, we expand the conventional focus on associations between socioeconomic status and fitness to three distinct types of wealth-embodied, material and relational. Using a model selection approach to the study of women's success in raising offspring in an African horticultural population (the Tanzanian Pimbwe), we find that the top performing models consistently include relational and material wealth, with embodied wealth as a less reliable predictor. Specifically, child mortality risk is increased with few household assets, parent nonresidency, child legitimacy, and one or more parents having been accused of witchcraft. The use of multiple models to test various hypotheses greatly facilitates systematic comparative analyses of human behavioural diversity in wealth accrual and investment across different kinds of societies.Keywords: fitness; child mortality; wealth; Pimbwe; human behavioural ecology; multi-model inference INTRODUCTIONBiologists strive to understand natural selection in wild populations in order to understand variability in traits within and between populations and species. Evolutionary social science embraces similar aims, recognizing that cultural [1], ecological [2] and material [3] transmission supplement genetic transmission in contributing to trait distributions. The specific contribution of human behavioural ecology to understanding the role of natural selection in human populations lies in determining the consequences for genetic fitness of specific behavioural, physiological and cognitive traits, and in exploring the adaptive flexibility of humans across traditional and modern contexts [4,5]. Though human behavioural ecology (aka evolutionary anthropology) cannot easily demonstrate evidence of genetically transmitted adaptations [6], it offers a useful and perhaps unique naturalistic window through which we can study the operation of selection in natural populations [7]. To understand the operation of natural selection in human populations, evolutionary anthropologists have, for several decades, studied the sources of fitness variation, aiming to specify the phenotypic traits on which

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Resources and reproductive success in women with an example from the Kipsigis of Kenya

Cited by 39 publications

References 41 publications

Cultivation of cereals by the first farmers was not more productive than foraging

Cultivation of cereals by the first farmers was not more productive than foraging

Evidence for an apartheid-like social structure in early Anglo-Saxon England

Understanding the nature of wealth and its effects on human fitness

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