Adjusting the Aperture: Decolonizing Time in Studies of Human Behavior and Evolution

Biological anthropology has long positioned foraging and often pastoralist populations as the most appropriate referent communities for the rigorous study of human behavior and evolution. With this, we have created a framework in which these communities exist in a world system that experiences the passage of time functionally differently than do individuals living in industrialized settings. Such thinking has come to structure our understanding of behavioral phenomena across time and space, encourage narrow interpretations of the relevance of various social processes, and constrain our ability to accurately imagine the full capacity of human behavioral variability. Our selective sampling persists despite the development of extra-genetic theoretical models that should be applicable in all communities. To meet even the most modest ends of this decolonial moment and for our science to continue expanding to include shifting landscapes resulting from increased globalization, it is necessary to move beyond assumptions about what has or has not changed in foraging communities, incorporate analyses about changes into research questions when appropriate, contend with observer bias in highly sampled communities, and expand research programs interested in human behavior and evolution to communities engaged in all kinds of economies and subsistence practices.