On Human Egalitarianism: An Evolutionary Product of Machiavellian Status Escalation?

The human socio-cognitive niche and its evolutionary origins

“…Other forms of cooperation extend to childcare, with youngsters being left under supervision in the camp while their parents forage. [2,3] recorded that in all but one of the 24 hunter -gatherer ethnographies consulted, the sharing of food, particularly meat, is described as being generalized across the band as a whole, with food being distributed according to need rather than based on criteria such as hunting prowess or kinship relations. Combined with the division of labour noted earlier, this means that all members of the band consume items that are largely obtained through the efforts of the band as a whole.…”

“…Erdal & Whiten [2] suggested that although the aspects of cooperation and egalitarianism shared by chimpanzees and humans are relatively minimal, if present in our common ancestors, they would logically have provided important seeds for the evolution of the remarkable forms they take in hunter -gatherer bands. As foraging strategies became more dependent on hunting large prey, cooperation and sharing can be expected to have become more common.…”

“…Sterelny [16,17] also converges with conclusions drawn in these papers in relation to sociality and cognition in hunting-gathering hominins, but does not explicitly discuss the concept of the cognitive niche. 2 An obvious concern is whether contemporary and recent huntergatherers are unrepresentative in having been pushed into marginal habitats. Marlowe [4] has tackled this issue directly in relation to band size and shown this to be unrelated to resources availability.…”

Purposive Social Selection and the Evolution of Human Altruism

“…For instance, these people invariably combine hunting and gathering, but show a preference for large game. Furthermore, there is a highly predictable ethos that makes for a strong consensus about holding down dominance behaviors that affect the entire band, and as a result they are predictably and assertively egalitarian in their political life (Boehm, 1993; see also Erdal & Whiten, 1994;Wiessner 1996). There is also band-level cooperation, which is centered on sharing large game, along with strong (but not absolute) tendencies to pair-bonded monogamy (Marlowe, 2005), a tendency to exhibit substantial homicide rates due to male competition over females (Knauft, 1991), a strong concern for conflict resolution within the multifamily band (see Boehm, 2000;Fry, 2000), and when a common problem is faced, a capacity of entire bands to arrive at a decision consensus in spite of having very weak leadership (Boehm, 1997).…”

What is the Ultimate Cause of Socio-Economic Inequalities in Health? An Explanation in Terms of Evolutionary Psychology

“…The social environment during the EEA differed from contemporary societies in several important respects. In particular, the ancestral society was not economically stratified and lacked the stable and cross-generational economic differentials between 'classes' which are universal in post-agricultural cultures 14--20. Palaeolithic society during the Pleistocene era was, to a high degree, egalitarian with an approximate equality of access to resources for men of the same age (the situation for women was somewhat different, but will not be considered further here I8, [21][22][23]. This egalitarian pattern of economic organization appears to hold for all cultures which have an economy based upon immediate returns, where food and other resources are rapidly consumed and there is no surplus for accumulation.…”