A Basic Demographic Unit [and Comments and Reply]

Birdsell, Joseph Benjamin; Bennett, John W.; Bicchieri, M. G.; Claessen, Henri J. M.; Gropper, Rena C.; Hart, Carol; Kileff, Clive; Posinsky, S. H.; Thompson, Laura

doi:10.1086/201347

Cited by 39 publications

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“… 38 , following ref. 39 ), the rejection threshold remains the same. Rates of replacement for contemporary traditional populations summarized by Soltis et al 40 .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

A parsimonious neutral model suggests Neanderthal replacement was determined by migration and random species drift

Kolodny

Feldman

2017

Nat Commun

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Most hypotheses in the heated debate about the Neanderthals’ replacement by modern humans highlight the role of environmental pressures or attribute the Neanderthals’ demise to competition with modern humans, who occupied the same ecological niche. The latter assume that modern humans benefited from some selective advantage over Neanderthals, which led to the their extinction. Here we show that a scenario of migration and selectively neutral species drift predicts the Neanderthals’ replacement. Our model offers a parsimonious alternative to those that invoke external factors or selective advantage, and represents a null hypothesis for assessing such alternatives. For a wide range of parameters, this hypothesis cannot be rejected. Moreover, we suggest that although selection and environmental factors may or may not have played a role in the inter-species dynamics of Neanderthals and modern humans, the eventual replacement of the Neanderthals was determined by the repeated migration of modern humans from Africa into Eurasia.

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“… 38 , following ref. 39 ), the rejection threshold remains the same. Rates of replacement for contemporary traditional populations summarized by Soltis et al 40 .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

A parsimonious neutral model suggests Neanderthal replacement was determined by migration and random species drift

Kolodny

Feldman

2017

Nat Commun

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“…He suggested complementing the existing correlation between land tenure and social category systems with an additional materialist foundation (see the critique by McKnight 1981), suggesting that types of social organisation are modes of adaptation to different kinds of environment. This additional factor is related to Birdsell's (1953Birdsell's ( , 1973 theory, for whom the notion of 'equilibrium' between population size, group size and environmental conditions (in particular, mean annual rainfall [Birdsell 1958]) was intrinsic to huntergatherer 'patrilineal-band' societies in general, and Aboriginal Australians in particular. For Birdsell (1973, p. 337), just like Radcliffe-Brown, the patrilineal local group (in contrast to Radcliffe-Brown, Birdsell used the word 'horde') underpins Australian society in general and provides the basis for a possible extension of this Australian model to understand a wider range of hunter-gatherer societies:…”

Section: The Organic Period: From Mapping a Model To Mapping Typologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systems in Geography or Geography of Systems? Attempts to Represent Spatial Distributions of Australian Social Organisation

Dousset

2018

Skin, Kin and Clan: The Dynamics of Social Categories in Indigenous Australia

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Tribes

Bodley

2017

The Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory

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Tribes probably originated with fully modern Homo sapiens beginning about 200,000 years ago. The tribe was the minimal social unit that could in theory be a self‐sufficient and self‐replicating, endogamous, or in‐marrying group sharing a language and territory. Marriage within a tribe was between exogamous subgroups designated as bands, clans, or moieties. Tribes are composed of autonomous subgroups with weak leaders rather than rulers, and they split when conflicts arise, rather than creating hierarchy. The rejection of political hierarchy and the related insistence on social equality is a crucial feature of tribal societies. The downside of rulerless tribal societies is the difficulty in preventing feuds. The upside is that there is no incentive for growth in scale and complexity, and this minimizes the problem of elite‐directed growth and concentrated power.

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A Basic Demographic Unit [and Comments and Reply]

Cited by 39 publications

References 0 publications

A parsimonious neutral model suggests Neanderthal replacement was determined by migration and random species drift

A parsimonious neutral model suggests Neanderthal replacement was determined by migration and random species drift

Systems in Geography or Geography of Systems? Attempts to Represent Spatial Distributions of Australian Social Organisation

Tribes

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