The continuing evolution of ownership

Abstract

The evolution in animals of a first possession convention, in which individuals retain what they are the first to acquire, has often been taken as a foundation for the evolution of human ownership institutions. However, among humans, individuals actually only seldom retain an item they have acquired from the environment, instead typically transferring what they possess to other members of the community, to those in command, or to those who hold a contractual title. This paper presents a novel game-theoretic model of the evolution of ownership institutions as rules governing resource transfers. Integrating existing findings, the model contributes a new perspective on the emergence of communal transfers among hominin large game hunters around 200,000 years ago, of command ownership among sedentary humans in the millennia prior to the transition to agriculture, and of titled property ownership around 5,500 years ago. Since today’s property institutions motivate transfers through the promise of future returns, the analysis presented here suggests that these institutions may be placed under considerable pressure should resources become significantly constrained.

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

“…If humans evolved in contexts where status-seeking or domineering behavior was constantly suppressed 16,32 , then the emergence of stratification and inherited inequality becomes a puzzle 33,34 . If, during 95% of our species' history, we lacked property [35][36][37] or cultivation 38,39 or large-scale political consolidation and decision-making 40 , then the emergence and ubiquity of those phenomena demands explanation. Depending on how one interprets ethnographic reports of mobile foragers, either the modern capacity for peace 28 or the predilection for war 10,29 are also historically peculiar and, as a result, demand special explanation.…”

Tools of the trade: the bio-cultural evolution of the human propensity to trade

“…8 Now, exactly how to characterize the necessary concept of property is not entirely obvious or uncontroversial. However, at a minimum, it requires the recognition that others are excludable from the use of the entity in question: if something P is the property of some organism O, then O can prevent others for using or accessing P (Scorolli et al 2018;Hartley 2019;Tse 2008;Torii 1974;Sherratt and Mesterton-Gibbons 2015;Tibble and Carvalho 2018). Beyond this minimal requirement, property concepts of different depths and extents can be distinguished.…”

“…However, in another sense, the fact that humans are extensive traders is much less clear. First, the extent to which humans engage in trade is culturally highly variable (Apicella et al 2014;Hartley 2019;Basu and Waymire 2006, p. 211;Basu et al it has now for the item in question. However, for the other party to accept the trade, it still requires that this other party is interested in this other thing (i.e.…”

“…(Henrich et al 2001, p. 76) 16 This variance in reliance on trade also exists in the temporal dimension: while there are good reasons to think that trade has been a crucial component of the bio-cultural evolution of some human populations (Nowell 2010;Ofek 2001, pp. 176-178, 226-226;Brooks et al 2018), the extent to which ancient human cultures relied on trade likely differed across time (Hartley 2019;Avsar 2020). For example, earlier human groups are likely to have relied less on trade, with extensive trading 14 Apicella et al ( 2014) also show that the Hadza display the endowment effect only in situations where many different things are seen as ownable.…”

“…However, whatever exactly may be true about the Machiguenga, the general point in the text is not controversial: the extent to which humans engage in trade is culturally highly variable. institutions only appearing with the advent of writing technology some 5 KYA (Hartley 2019;Mullins et al 2013;Seabright 2010). 17 The second reason why the characterization of humans as extensive traders is more complex than it might at first appear resides in the fact that many aspects of the major psychological sub-systems underlying their propensity to trade (the disposition and capacity to cooperate reciprocally, and the concepts of property and exchange value) are shared with non-human animals.…”