Kristin Otto, Kelsey Moore, Yuki Nakano, Sasha Neufeld, Jeffrey Perkins
Last week, we attended the lecture “It’s Not All Sex and Violence” given by Augustin Fuentes from the University of Notre Dame and author of “The Evolution of Human Behavior.” In his talk he focused on an alternate view of how humans behave, offering that not all human tendencies and interactions are based on conflict and sex, the cliché and widely accepted view of human evolution.
Why did the homo-erectus species take off, and the majority of the species at the time died off? Fuentes argues that looking at broad trends that prioritize sex and violence make us miss important aspects of human evolutionary success, which is, we argue, is largely based on behavior. All of our anthropological evidence shows that early human ancestors were organized into medium sized, multi adult male and female child societies. The typical view of human behavior and social organization is problematic in that it severely limits our evolutionary perspectives by envisioning the pair as the base unit of behavior.
By using the pair as the basal model, Fuentes argues that we focus too much on sex and violence and that this approach over simplifies human behavior by using a comparative animal approach. As we see it, humans as compared to other animal species have radically different roles in reproductive systems. Therefore, the comparative animal behavior approach that many evolutionary theorists take to explain the evolution of human behavior is misdirected. There are fundamental differences between humans and some other animals when it comes to sexual reproduction and relationship structures.
Fuentes then talked about humans as social mammals that have “social minds” where relationships and kinship are important. Increased social complexity and heightened cooperation, then, lead to more “human” like tendencies in prior mammals. Fuentes highlighted the importance of symbolic sociality, extreme cooperation, and teach that lead to the characterization of human behavior as separate from previously identified “ape” like behaviors. Characteristic human behaviors include extended allocare and the shift to more complex environmental manipulation and geographic expansion. Environmental stimuli encountered during geographic expansion required changes in behavior in order that humans adapt to their surroundings. Out of this trend, we see the inventions of tool and fire use, as well as a host of other trends that require cooperative teaching, learning, and transport of knowledge. The development of trade and intergroup cooperation also led to increases in symbolic communication (language) between humans. All of these trends require heightened cooperation and collaboration in order for survival.
Though some behavior is genetically inherited, a lot of it is learned based on environmental adaptation, which could in turn lead to niche construction, another point of focus in Fuentes view of human behavioral evolution. For a definition and explanation of niche construction, see http://www.semioticon.com/seo/N/niche.html. Fuentes claims that increased brain size and cooperation lead to increases in communicative complexity, increased effectiveness in avoiding predation, and expansion of types and patterns of habitats exploited. As humans became predators and organized into hunter societies, other predatory animals shifted away from humans and toward other prey, thereby reducing the selective pressures of predation. The creation of this niche allowed for an increase in social interaction and exploration which formed feedback for higher cognitive capabilities. The heritable components of niche construction include social traditions, tool use and manufacture, and increased infant survivorship. Fire use, increased habitat exploration, and increased information via complex communication patters are other examples of niche construction that are highly dependent on human cooperation.
Our group was in agreement with Fuentes’ position on the evolution of human behavior. While sex and violence are certainly aspects of human behavior, a disproportionate amount of focus is placed on such actions. By limiting ourselves to these behaviors and limiting the social model to simple pair analysis, we miss the incredible evolutionary influences of human cooperation. On any given day and in any given time period, the majority of human interactions are cooperative and collaborative. Evolution happens in large-scale time frames, if the majority of behavior was centered on violence, the human population would not have survived or evolved with the success that it has.
