Human macroecology: linking pattern and process in big‐picture human ecology

Abstract

Humans have a dual nature. We are subject to the same natural laws and forces as other species yet dominate global ecology and exhibit enormous variation in energy use, cultural diversity, and apparent social organization. We suggest scientists tackle these challenges with a macroecological approach-using comparative statistical techniques to identify deep patterns of variation in large datasets and to test for causal mechanisms. We show the power of a metabolic perspective for interpreting these patterns and suggesting possible underlying mechanisms, one that focuses on the exchange of energy and materials within and among human societies and with the biophysical environment. Examples on human foraging ecology, life history, space use, population structure, disease ecology, cultural and linguistic diversity patterns, and industrial and urban systems showcase the power and promise of this approach.

The nature and dynamics of world religions: a life-history approach

“…First, it remains unknown whether the set of long-term-oriented behaviours associated with religions are adaptive or not. Indeed, the high level of resources and low mortality rate of our modern environment are incommensurable to those experienced in pre-Neolithic or even pre-industrial environments [7,119]. It is therefore possible that the human psychosocial acceleration system is calibrated for an environment that no longer exists and that the kind of very slow strategies associated with world religions are in fact suboptimal.…”

Ecology in an anthropogenic biosphere

“…As early societies scaled up, supported by increasingly intensive use of the most suitable lands and by extensification of populations across regions, the importance of central places increased as well, as sites of denser, more resource rich, and more culturally rich populations sustained increasingly by cooperative strategies of subsistence exchange (Dyson-Hudson and Smith 1978, Hamilton et al 2009, Kaplan et al 2009, Burnside et al 2012. The central places of hunter-gatherers were not cities, nor were their lifestyles urbanized through specialized subsistence regimes, the unequal distribution of resources, hierarchical social organization, or dependence on subsistence exchange.…”

“…The central places of hunter-gatherers were not cities, nor were their lifestyles urbanized through specialized subsistence regimes, the unequal distribution of resources, hierarchical social organization, or dependence on subsistence exchange. Yet central places still played a significant functional role in sedentary huntergatherer societies as the optimal loci of networks of cultural and material exchange (Redman 1999, Hamilton et al 2009, Kaplan et al 2009, Burnside et al 2012, Brughmans 2013, Ortman et al 2014. Long before the rise of cities and urban lifeways, the importance of social networks and centrality in structuring the processes of sociocultural niche construction, cultural and material accumulation and subsistence exchange were established (Dyson-Hudson and Smith 1978, Cowgill 2004, Hamilton et al 2009, Kaplan et al 2009, Feinman and Garraty 2010, Burnside et al 2012, Brughmans 2013, Ortman et al 2014.…”

Energy and time determine scaling in biological and computer designs

“…These social species have experienced great success, dispersing over vast territories across the globe and capturing a large fraction of available energy [42,43]. Recent evidence suggests that ant colonies and human societies follow similar scaling relationships as individual organisms [44][45][46][47][48].…”