Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T01:43:08.952Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The economic origins of ultrasociality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2015

John Gowdy  and
Lisi Krall
John Gowdy
Affiliation:
Department of Economics and Department of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY [email protected]://www.economics.rpi.edu/pl/people/john-gowdy
Lisi Krall
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, State University of New York (SUNY) at Cortland, Cortland, NY [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Ultrasociality refers to the social organization of a few species, including humans and some social insects, having a complex division of labor, city-states, and an almost exclusive dependence on agriculture for subsistence. We argue that the driving forces in the evolution of these ultrasocial societies were economic. With the agricultural transition, species could directly produce their own food and this was such a competitive advantage that those species now dominate the planet. Once underway, this transition was propelled by the selection of within-species groups that could best capture the advantages of (1) actively managing the inputs to food production, (2) a more complex division of labor, and (3) increasing returns to larger scale and larger group size. Together these factors reoriented productive life and radically altered the structure of these societies. Once agriculture began, populations expanded as these economic drivers opened up new opportunities for the exploitation of resources and the active management of inputs to food production. With intensified group-level competition, larger populations and intensive resource exploitation became competitive advantages, and the “social conquest of Earth” was underway. Ultrasocial species came to dominate the earth's ecosystems. Ultrasociality also brought a loss of autonomy for individuals within the group. We argue that exploring the common causes and consequences of ultrasociality in humans and the social insects that adopted agriculture can provide fruitful insights into the evolution of complex human society.

Keywords

agricultural transitiondivision of labormajor evolutionary transitionsmultilevel selectionsurplus productiontotipotencyultrasociality
Type
Target Article
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 39 , 2016 , e92
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aanen, D. & Boomsma, J. (2006) Social-insect fungus farming. Current Biology 16(24):R1014–16.Google Scholar
Anderson, C. & McShea, D. (2001) Individual versus social complexity, with particular reference to ant colonies. Biological Reviews 76:211–37.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ariely, D. (2008) Predictably irrational. HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Barnosky, A., Hadley, D., Bascompte, J., Berlow, E., Brown, J., Fortlius, M., Getz, W., Harte, J., Hastings, A., Marquet, P., Martinez, N., Mooers, A., Roopnarine, P., Vermeij, G., Williams, J., Gillespie, R., Kitzes, J., Marshall, C., Matzke, N., Mindell, D., Revilla, E. & Smith, A. (2012) Approaching a state shift in earth's biosphere. Nature 486:52–58.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Barrett, L., Henzi, P. & Rendall, D. (2007) Social brains, simple minds: Does social complexity really require cognitive complexity? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 362(1480):561–75.Google Scholar
Bar-Yosef, O. (1998) The Natufian culture in the Levant, threshold to the origins of agriculture. Evolutionary Anthropologist 6:59–177.Google Scholar
Beerling, D. J. (1999) New estimates of carbon transfer to terrestrial ecosystems between the last glacial maximum and the Holocene. Terra Nova 11:162–67.Google Scholar
Belfer-Cohen, A. & Bar-Yosef, O. (2000) Early sedentism in the Near East – A bumpy ride to village life. In: Life in Neolithic farming communities. Social organization, identity, and differentiation, ed. Kuijt, I., pp. 19–37. Kluwer Academic/Plenum.Google Scholar
Benckiser, G. (2010) Ants and sustainable agriculture. A review. Agronomy for Sustainable Development 30(2):191–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beshers, S. & Fewell, J. (2001) Models of division of labor in social insects. Annual Review of Entomology 46:413–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Binford, L. (1968) Post Pleistocene adaptations. In: New perspectives in archaeology, ed. Binford, L. & Binford, S., pp. 313–41. Aldine.Google Scholar
Biraben, J.-N. (2003) The rising numbers of humankind. Population and Societies 394(October):1–4.Google Scholar
Blute, M. (2010) Darwinian sociocultural evolution. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bocquet-Appel, J.-P. (2011) When the world's population took off: The springboard of the Neolithic demographic transition. Science 333(6042):560–61.Google Scholar
Boehm, C. (1997) Impact of the human egalitarian syndrome on Darwinian selection mechanisms. American Naturalist 150:100–21.Google Scholar
Boehm, C. (1999) Hierarchy in the forest. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Boehm, C. (2012) Moral origins: The evolution of virtue, altruism, and shame. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Bowles, S. & Choi, J.-K. (2012) Holocene revolution: The co-evolution of agricultural technology and private property institutions. Santa Fe Institute.Google Scholar
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. (1980) Effect of phenotypic variation on kin selection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 77:7506–509.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boyd, R. & Richerson, P. (2002) Group beneficial norms spread rapidly in a structured population. Journal of Theoretical Biology 215:287–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruce, A. & Burd, M. (2012) Allometric scaling of foraging rate with trial dimensions in leaf-cutting ants. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 279:2442–47.Google Scholar
Burkhardt, J. F. (1998) Individual flexibility and tempo in the ant, Pheidole dentata, the influence of group size. Journal of Insect Behavior 11:493–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, D. (1974) Downward causation in hierarchically organized biological systems. In: Studies in the philosophy of biology: Reduction and related problems, ed. Ayala, F. & Dobzhansky, T., pp. 179–86. Macmillan.Google Scholar
Campbell, D. (1982) Legal and primary-group social controls. In: Law, biology and culture: The evolution of law, ed. Gruter, M. & Bohannan, P., pp. 59–171. Bepress.Google Scholar
Campbell, D. (1983) The two distinct routes beyond kin selection to ultrasociality: Implications for the humanities and social sciences. In: The nature of prosocial development: Theories and strategies, ed. Bridgeman, D. L., pp. 11–41. Academic Press.Google Scholar
Caporael, L. (1997) The evolution of truly social cognition. Personality and Social Psychology Review 1:276–98.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Caporael, L. & Garvey, C. (2014) The primacy of scaffolding within groups for the evolution of group-level traits. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37(3):255–56.Google Scholar
Carneiro, R. L. (1970) A theory of the origin of the state. Science 169:733–38.Google Scholar
Caspermeyer, J. (2013) Genetic study pushes back timeline for first significant human population expansion. Molecular Biology and Evolution Press Office.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Choi, J.-K. & Bowles, S. (2007) The coevolution of parochial altruism and war. Science 318:636–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cochran, G. & Harpending, H. (2009) The 10,000 year explosion. Basic Books.Google Scholar
Cohen, M. (1977) The food crisis in prehistory: Overpopulation and the origins of agriculture. Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, M. & Crane-Kramer, G. (2007) Ancient health: Skeletal indicators of agricultural and economic intensification. University Press of Florida.Google Scholar
Cox, M., Morales, D., Woerner, A., Sozanski, J., Wall, J. D. & Hammer, M. (2009) Autosomal resequence data reveal Late Stone Age signals of population expansion in sub-Saharan African foraging and farming populations. PLoS ONE 4(7):e6366.Google Scholar
Cox, S. (2009) Crop domestication and the first plant breeders. In: Plant breeding and farmer participation, ed. Ceccarelli, S., Guimaraes, E. P. & Weltizien, E., pp. 171–93. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO).Google Scholar
Crespi, B. J. & Yanega, D. (1995) The definition of eusociality. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 6:109–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Culotta, E. (2013) Latest skirmish over ancestral violence strikes blow for peace. Science 341:244.Google Scholar
Darwin, C. (1871) The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. John Murray.Google Scholar
Diamond, J. (1997) Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies. W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Diamond, J. (2005) Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed. Viking Press.Google Scholar
Dunbar, R. (1993) Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16(6):681–735.Google Scholar
Edwards, S. & Pratt, S. (2009) Rationality in collective decision-making by ant colonies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 276:3655–61.Google Scholar
Falk, D. & Dudek, B. (1993) Mosaic evolution of the neocortex. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 16(6):701–702.Google Scholar
Ferguson-Gow, H., Sumner, S., Bourke, A. & Jones, K. (2014) Colony size predicts division of labor in attine ants. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 281(1793). [October 2014 issue; article first published Online on August 27, 2014]. doi:10.1098/rspb.2014.1411. Available at: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1793/20141411 Google Scholar
Fewell, J. & Page, R. E. Jr. (1999) The emergence of division of labor in forced associations of normally solitary ant queens. Evolutionary Ecology Research 1:537–48.Google Scholar
Fittkau, E. & Klinge, H. (1973) On biomass and tropic structure of the central Amazonian rain forest ecosystem. Biotropica 5:2–14.Google Scholar
Flannery, K. (1968) Archaeological systems theory and early Mesoamerica. In: Anthropological archaeology in the Americas, ed. Meggers, B., pp. 67–87. Anthropological Society of Washington.Google Scholar
Flannery, T. (2009) The superior civilization. Review of The Superorganism: The beauty, elegance, and strangeness of insect societies, by Hölldobler, B. and Wilson, E. O.. New York Review of Books. Available at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/feb/26/the-superior-civilization/?pagination=false Google Scholar
Foley, R. (2008) The illusion of purpose in evolution. In: The deep structure of biology, ed. Morris, S. C., pp. 161–77. Templeton Foundation Press.Google Scholar
Folgarait, P. (1998) Ant biodiversity and its relationship to ecosystem functioning: A review. Biodiversity and Conservation 7:1221–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, K. R. & Wenseleers, T. (2006) A general model for the evolution of mutualisms. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 19(4):1283–93.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Franks, N. R. (1987) The organization of worker teams in social insects. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 2:72–75.Google Scholar
Frith, U. & Frith, C. (2010) The social brain: Allowing humans to boldly go where no other species has been. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 365:165–76.Google Scholar
Fry, D. & Söderberg, P. (2013) Lethal aggression in mobile forager bands and implications for the origins of war. Science 341:270–73.Google Scholar
Geary, D. & Bailey, D. (2009) Hominid brain evolution: Testing climatic, ecological, and social competition models. Human Nature 20:265–79.Google Scholar
Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1965) Process in farming versus process in manufacturing: A problem of balanced development. In: Energy and economic myths, ed. Georgescu-Roegen, N., pp. 71–102. Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1976) Energy and economic myths. In: Energy and economic myths, ed. Georgescu-Roegen, N., pp. 3–36. Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1977a) Inequality, limits, and growth from bioeconomic viewpoint. Review of Social Economy 35:361–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ghiselin, M. (2009) Review of The Superorganism: The beauty, elegance, and strangeness of insect societies, book by Bert Hölldobler & E. O. Wilson. American Scientist 97:240–44.Google Scholar
Gordon, D. (2007) Control without hierarchy. Nature 446:143. (Published online March 7, 2007). doi:10.1038/446143a.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gowdy, J., ed. (1998) Limited wants, unlimited means: A reader on hunter-gatherer economics and the environment. Island Press.Google Scholar
Gowdy, J., Dollimore, D., Wilson, D. & Witt, U. (2013) Economic cosmology and the evolutionary challenge. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 90(Suppl.):S11–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gowdy, J. & Krall, L. (2013) The ultrasocial origins of the Anthropocene. Ecological Economics 95:137–47.Google Scholar
Gowdy, J. & Krall, L. (2014) The transition to agriculture and the evolution of human ultrasociality. Journal of Bioeconomics 16(2):179–202.Google Scholar
Grayson, D & Meltzer, D. (2003) A requiem for North American overkill. Journal of Archaeological Science 30:585–93.Google Scholar
Grinsted, L., Agnarsson, I. & Bilde, T. (2012) Subsocial behaviour and brood adoption in mixed-species colonies of two theridiid spiders. Naturwissenschaften 99:1021–30.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hawks, J. (2011) Selection for smaller brains in Holocene human evolution. John Hawks weblog, August 22. Available at: http://johnhawks.net/research/hawks-2011-brain-size-selection-holocene Google Scholar
Hawks, K. (2003) Grandmothers and the evolution of human longevity. American Journal of Human Biology 15:380–400.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, G. & Knudsen, T. (2010) Darwin's conjecture: The search for general principles of social & economic evolution. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Holbrook, T., Barton, M. & Fewell, J. (2011) Division of labor increases with colony size in the harvester ant Pogonomyrmex californicus . Behavioral Ecology 22:960–66.Google Scholar
Holbrook, T., Clark, R., Jeanson, R., Bertram, S., Kukuk, P. & Fewell, J. (2009) Emergence and consequences of division of labor in associations of normally solitary sweat bees. Ethology 115:301–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hölldobler, B. & Wilson, E. O. (2009) The superorganism: The beauty, elegance, and strangeness of insect societies. W. W. Norton. [First Paperback edition]Google Scholar
Hölldobler, B. & Wilson, E. O. (2011) The leafcutter ants: Civilization by instinct. W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Hou, C., Kaspari, M., Vander Zanden, H. B. & Gillooly, J. F. (2010) Energetic basis of colonial living in social insects. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 107(8):3634–38.Google Scholar
Judd, T. & Sherman, P. (1996) Naked mole-rats recruit colony mates to food sources. Animal Behaviour 52:957–69.Google Scholar
Kahn, A. (1966) The tyranny of small decisions: Market failures, imperfections, and the limits of economics. Kyklos 19:23–47.Google Scholar
Kaplan, H., Hill, K., Lancaster, J. & Hurtado, M. (2000) A theory of human life history evolution: Diet, intelligence, and longevity. Evolutionary Anthropology 156–85.Google Scholar
King, J., Warren, R. & Bradford, M. (2013) Social insects dominate eastern US temperate hardwood forest macroinvertebrate communities in warmer regions. PLoS One 8(10). (Online article). doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0075843.Google Scholar
Korb, J. (2007) Termites. Current Biology 17:R995–99. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2007.10.033 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuijt, I. & Finlayson, B. (2009) Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 106:10966–70. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0812764106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laland, K. & Brown, G. (2006) Niche construction, human behavior, and the dapative-lag hypothesis. Evolutionary Anthropology 15:95–104.Google Scholar
Laland, K., Odling-Smee, F. & Feldman, M. (2001) Niche construction, biological evolution, and cultural change. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23(1):131–46; discussion 146–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lambert, P. M. (2009) Health versus fitness. Current Anthropology 50(5):603–608.Google Scholar
Larsen, C. S. (2006) The agricultural revolution as environmental catastrophe: Implications for health and lifestyles in the Holocene. Quaternary International 150:12–20.Google Scholar
Lee, R. (1968) What hunters do for a living, or, how to make out on scarce resources. Reprinted in: Gowdy, J., ed. (1998) Limited wants, unlimited means: A reader on hunter-gatherer economics and the environment, pp. 43–63. Island Press.Google Scholar
Lee, R. (1984/2013) The Dobe Ju/'Hoansi, 4th edition. Wadsworth. (Original work published in 1984).Google Scholar
Lloyd, E. (2012) Units and levels of selection. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 edition), ed. Zalta, E. N.. Available at: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/selection-units.Google Scholar
Lotka, A. (1925/1956) Elements of physical biology. Williams & Wilkins. (Reissued in 1956 as Elements of mathematical biology. Dover.)Google Scholar
Makarewicz, C. (2012) The Younger Dryas and hunter-gatherer transitions to food production in the Near East. In: Hunter-gatherer behaviour: Human response during the Younger Dryas, ed. Eren, M., pp. 195–230. Left Coast Press.Google Scholar
Matthew, S. & Boyd, R. (2011) Punishment sustains large-scale cooperation in prestate warfare. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 108:11375–80.Google Scholar
McAuliffe, K. (2010) If modern humans are so smart, why are our brains shrinking? Discover Magazine 31(7):54–59.Google Scholar
McCorriston, J. & Hole, F. (1991) The ecology of seasonal stress and the origins of agriculture in the Near East. American Anthropologist 93:46–69.Google Scholar
McCorriston, J. & Hole, F. (2000a) Barley. In: The Cambridge world history of food, vol. 1, ed. Kiple, K. & Ornelas, K, pp. 81–90. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCorriston, J. & Hole, F. (2000b) Wheat. The Cambridge world history of food, vol. 1, ed. Kiple, K. & Ornelas, K, pp. 158–74. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDaniel, M. (2005) Big-brained people are smarter: A meta-analysis of the relationship between in vivo brain volume and intelligence. Intelligence 33:337–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Michod, R. (2005) On the transfer of fitness from the cell to the multicellular organism. Biology and Philosophy 20:967–87.Google Scholar
Mithen, S. (1996) The prehistory of the mind: A search for the origins of art, science and religion. Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Mithen, S. (2007) Did farming arise from a misapplication of social intelligence? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 362:705–18.Google Scholar
Moffett, M. (2010) Adventures among the ants. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Moffett, M. (2012) Supercolonies of billions in an invasive ant: What is a society? Behavioral Ecology 23:925–33.Google Scholar
Mueller, U. & Gerardo, N. (2002) Fungus-farming insects: Multiple origins and diverse evolutionary histories. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 99(24):15247–49.Google Scholar
Mueller, U., Rehner, S. & Schultz, T. (1998) The evolution of agriculture in ants. Science 281:2034–38.Google Scholar
Mueller, U. G., Gerardo, N. M., Aanen, D. K., Six, D. L. & Schultz, T. R. (2005) The evolution of agriculture in insects. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 36:563–95. doi:10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.36.102003.152626.Google Scholar
Munro, N. (2003) Small game, the Younger Dryas, and the transition to agriculture in the southern Levant. Mitteilungen der Geseelschaft für Urgeschichte 12:47–71.Google Scholar
Nanay, B. (2005) Can cumulative selection explain adaptation? Philosophy of Science 72:1099–112.Google Scholar
Naroll, R. (1956) A preliminary index of social development. American Anthropologist 58:687–715.Google Scholar
Nowak, M. A., Tarnita, C. E. & Wilson, E. O. (2010) The evolution of eusociality. Nature 466(7310):1057–62.Google Scholar
Okasha, S. (2006) Evolution and the levels of selection. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Oster, G. F. & Wilson, E. O. (1978) Caste and ecology in the social insects. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Pennisi, E. (2014) Our egalitarian Eden. Science 344:824–25.Google Scholar
Pimm, S., Jenkins, C., Abell, R., Brooks, T., Gittleman, J., Joppa, L, Raven, P., Roberts, C. & Sexton, J. (2014) The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection. Science 344:987–96.Google Scholar
Prentiss, A. (2012) The cultural evolution of material wealth based inequality at Bridge River, British Columbia. American Antiquity 77:542–64.Google Scholar
Price, D. & Bar-Yosef, O. (2011) The origins of agriculture: New data, new ideas. Current Anthropology 52:S163–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pringle, H. (2014) The ancient roots of the 1%. Science 344:822–25.Google Scholar
Reeve, H. K. (2000) Multi-level selection and human cooperation. Evolution and Human Behavior 21:65–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richerson, P. & Boyd, R. (1998) The evolution of human ultra-sociality, In: Ideology, warfare, and indoctrinability, ed. Eibl-Eibisfeldt, I. & Salter, F., pp. 71–95. Berghan Books.Google Scholar
Richerson, P. & Boyd, R. (2005) Not by genes alone: How culture transformed human evolution. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Richerson, P., Boyd, R. & Bettinger, R. (2001) Was agriculture impossible during the Pleistocene but mandatory during the Holocene? A climate change hypothesis. American Antiquity 66:387–411.Google Scholar
Rindos, D. (1984) The origins of agriculture: An evolutionary perspective. Academic Press.Google Scholar
Riveros, A., Seid, M. & Wcislo, W. (2012) Evolution of brain size in class-based societies of fungus-growing ants (Attini). Animal Behavior 83:1043–49.Google Scholar
Rosen, A. & Rivera-Collazo, I. (2012) Climate change, adaptive cycles, and the persistence of foraging economies during the Late Pleistocene/Holocene transition in the Levant. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 109:3640–45.Google Scholar
Ryan, C. & Jethá, C. (2010) Sex at dawn. HarperCollins.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M. (1996) The sadness of sweetness: The native anthropology of Western cosmology. Current Anthropology 37:395–428.Google Scholar
Sanderson, E., Jaith, M., Levy, M., Redford, K., Wannebo, A. & Woolmer, G. (2002) The human footprint and the last of the wild. BioScience 52:891–904.Google Scholar
Santana, C. & Weisberg, M. (2014) Group-level traits are not units of selection. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37(3):271–72.Google Scholar
Seid, M., Castillo, A. & Wcislo, W. (2011) The allometry of brain miniaturization in ants. Brain, Behavior, and Evolution 7:5–13.Google Scholar
Shakun, J., Clark, P., Marcott, S., Liu, Z. & Otto-Bliesner, B. (2012) Global warming preceded by increasing carbon dioxide concentrations during the last deglaciation. Nature 484:49–54.Google Scholar
Shik, J. Z., Hou, C., Kay, A., Kasari, M. & Gillooly, J. F. (2012) Towards a general life-history model of the superorganism: Predicting the survival, growth and reproduction of ant societies. Biology Letters 8(6):1059–62. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2012.0463.Google Scholar
Smaldino, P. (2014) The cultural evolution of emergent group-level traits. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 37(3):243–95.Google Scholar
Smil, V. (2013) Harvesting the biosphere. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Smith, A. (1776/1937) An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. Modern Library. (Original work published in 1776).Google Scholar
Smith, P. (1972) Diet and attrition in the Natufians. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 37:233–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sober, E. & Wilson, D. S. (1998) Unto others: The evolution and psychology of unselfish behavior. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Spencer, C. (2010) War and early state formation in Oaxaca, Mexico. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 100:11185–87.Google Scholar
Sperry, R. (1969) A modified concept of consciousness. Psychological Review 76:532–36.Google Scholar
Steffen, W., Grinevald, J., Crutzen, P. & McNeill, J. (2011) The Anthropocene: Conceptual and historical perspectives. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 369:842–67.Google Scholar
Tainter, J., Allen, T. F. H. & Hoekstra, T. W. (2006) Energy transformations and post-normal science. Energy 31:44–58.Google Scholar
Tennie, C., Call, J. & Tomasello, M. (2009) Ratcheting up the ratchet: On the evolution of cumulative culture. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 364:2405–15.Google Scholar
Tilly, C. (1992) Coercion, capital, and European States, AD 990–1992. Blackwell.Google Scholar
Trivers, R. L. (1971) The evolution of reciprocal altruism. Quarterly Review of Biology 46:35–57.Google Scholar
Turchin, P. (2006a) War and peace and war: The life cycles of imperial nations. Pi Press. (Original first edition).Google Scholar
Turchin, P. (2013) The puzzle of human ultrasociality: How did large-scale complex societies evolve? In: Cultural evolution, ed. Richerson, P. & Christiansen, M., pp. 61–73. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Turchin, P., Currie, T. E., Turner, E. A. L. & Gavrilets, S. (2013) War, space, and the evolution of Old World complex societies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 110(41):16384–89. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1308825110.Google Scholar
van den Bergh, J. & Gowdy, J. (2009) A group selection perspective on economic behavior, institutions and organizations. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 72:1–20.Google Scholar
Vanberg, V. (2014) Collective action, institutional design and evolutionary “blindness.” Journal of Bioeconomics 16:99–104.Google Scholar
Wcislo, W. (2012) Big brains, little bodies. Science 338:1419.Google Scholar
Weiss, H. & Bradley, R. (2001) What drives societal collapse? Science 291:609–10.Google Scholar
Weiss, H., Courty, M. A., Wetterstrom, W., Guichard, F., Senior, L., Meadow, R. & Curnow, A. (1993) The genesis and collapse of third millennium North Mesopotamian civilization. Science 261:995–1004.Google Scholar
Wexler, B. E. (2006) Brain and culture. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Williams, G. (1957) Peiotropy, natural selection, and the evolution of senescence. Evolution 11:398–411.Google Scholar
Williams, G. (1992) Natural selection: Domains, levels, challenges. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, D. S. (1997) Human groups as units of selection. Science 276:1816–17.Google Scholar
Wilson, D. S. (2010) Truth and Reconciliation for group selection. Available at: http://evolution.binghamton.edu/dswilson/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Truth-and-Reconciliation.pdf Google Scholar
Wilson, D. S. (2013) A good social Darwinism. Aeon Magazine, July 4, 2013. (Online). Available at: http://aeon.co/magazine/society/how-evolution-can-reform-economics/ Google Scholar
Wilson, D. S. & Gowdy, J. M. (2013) Evolution as a general theoretical framework for economics and public policy. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 90 (Suppl.):S3–S10. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2012.12.008 Google Scholar
Wilson, D. S. & Gowdy, J. M. (2015) Human ultrasociality and the invisible hand: Foundational developments in evolutionary science alter a foundational concept in economics. Journal of Bioeconomics 17(1):37–52. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1007/s10818-014-9192-x Google Scholar
Wilson, D. S., Ostrom, E. & Cox, M. (2013) Generalizing the core design principles for the efficacy of groups. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 90(Suppl.):S21–32.Google Scholar
Wilson, E. O. (1971) The insect societies. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, E. O. (1975) Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, E. O. (1987) Causes of ecological success: The case of the ants. Journal of Animal Ecology 56:1–9.Google Scholar
Wilson, E. O. (2008) One giant leap: How insects achieved altruism and colonial life. BioScience 58:17–25.Google Scholar
Wilson, E. O. (2012) The social conquest of Earth. Liveright/W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Wilson, E. O. (2014) The meaning of human existence. W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Wilson, E. O. & Hölldobler, B. (2005) Eusociality: Origin and consequences. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 102(38):13367–71. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0505858102.Google Scholar
Woodburn, J. (1982) Egalitarian societies. Man 17:431–51. Reprinted in: Gowdy, J., ed. (1998) Limited wants, unlimited means: A reader on hunter-gatherer economics and the environment. pp. 87–110. Island Press.Google Scholar
Wright, R. (2004) A short history of progress. House of Anansi Press.Google Scholar
Zvelebil, M. & Rowley-Conwy, P. (1986/2009) Foragers and farmers in Atlantic Europe. In: Hunters in transition: Mesolithic Societies of temperate Eurasia and their transition to farming, ed. Zvelebil, M., pp. 67–93. Cambridge University Press. (Original publication in 1986).Google Scholar