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Emergence and Evolution of Cooperation Under Resource Pressure
María Pereda1, Débora Zurro2,3,4, José I Santos5
1Grupo Interdisciplinar de Sistemas Complejos (GISC), Departamento de Matemáticas, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911 Leganés, Madrid, Spain.
Scientific Reports
|April 1, 2017
Summary
Cooperation in hunter-gatherer societies evolved through resource availability. Moderate survival stress promotes indirect reciprocity, where sharing non-essential resources reduces starvation risk and enhances collective survival.
Area of Science:
- Anthropology
- Evolutionary Biology
- Archaeology
Background:
- Resource availability significantly impacts social dynamics in hunter-gatherer societies.
- Understanding cooperation is key to explaining human social evolution.
- Resource stress episodes offer insights into societal adaptations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To model the influence of resource availability on cooperation in hunter-gatherer societies.
- To identify distinct cooperative regimes based on environmental resources and population size.
- To explore the evolutionary mechanisms driving cooperation under survival stress.
Main Methods:
- Development of a theoretical model integrating archaeological and ethnographic data.
- Analysis of resource stress episodes in hunter-gatherer contexts.
- Examination of population size and resource availability dynamics.
Main Results:
- Identification of three distinct cooperative regimes.
- Highlighting a regime of moderate survival stress fostering evolutionary coordination.
- Observation of self-organization into indirect reciprocity systems for resource sharing.
- Emergence of a norm to share non-essential resources to mitigate starvation.
Conclusions:
- Resource availability and survival stress are critical drivers of cooperation evolution.
- Indirect reciprocity and resource sharing are adaptive strategies in resource-scarce environments.
- The study provides a framework for understanding cooperative behaviors in ancestral human populations.