Bands, fertility and the social organization of early humans (original) (raw)

2006, Social Evolution & History

In this paper it is shown that early human society could not have been organized as bands. The contrary, and apparently universal, conception among anthropologists is based on observations of contemporary hunter-gatherers who live in regions within which fertility cannot be fully expressed, due to severe resource limitations. This is a circumstance that is expected to lead to band organization because (as this paper shows) it is inconsistent with socially defined groupings based on genetic links by which territorial claims might be made. Early humans, on the other hand, are very likely to have competed for territory as their radiation proceeded, and local groups would find advantages in their relative demographic strength. Hence, the only available Evolutionary Stable Strategy requires that people organize around the benefits of fertility-as-wealth in some indeterminate form of intergenerational aggregation, as they struggled to maintain possession of (additional) territory in the context of social circumscription. While lineages, tribes and states are the most sophisticated forms of such aggregations, the author suggests the likelihood that early humans might have possessed other forms that are ethnographically unknown.