Before I explain one of my questions and hypotheses I think it is important to establish a firm foundation of constructs with which to approach said questions. Not only is it appropriate to apply evolutionary theory to the study of human behavioral variation, in my opinion it is necessary! Proponents of intelligent design and alternative theories to evolutionary theory may explain that evolution is not a proven fact but rather a theory and advocate alternative methods and considerations. These are important, however, the fact of the matter is that intelligent design and evolution are fairly closely linked when it comes to constructs and concepts. The point here is not necessarily that evolutionary theory is directly applicable to everything in human behavioral variation or that evolution is a fact (cannot yet be proven, perhaps can never be proven) but that the application of the theories of evolution can be used to better our understanding of human behavioral variation.
Very few people would argue against the concept that traits are heritable (one of Darwin’s four postulates). This is fundamental in evolutionary theory but has its applications in other theories and sciences and must be taken into account in such alternative theories as intelligent design. I can’t really make an argument for or against evolutionary theory in comparison with intelligent design (what little I know of it), and indeed it does seem like the functions in life are much too complex to have occurred by chance. However, this is not the underlying concept of evolutionary theory, which, in fact, seems to make little to no inferences about the actual point of creation. Several key public figures, however, make it fairly easy to refute the ‘intelligent’ portion of intelligent design (politicians, etc.). I believe that it is important to distinguish between the portions of these theories which apply to actual science and the portions which pointlessly conjecture about whether or not there is a greater abstract entity or not. The starting point of the development of living organisms, as it were, has played a very small role in the actual science and information portion of the science of anthropology.
Phenotypic variation obviously occurs. However, certain phenotypes appear to have different adaptive values in different environments. For instance, a Chihuahua is obviously suited for hot, arid environments. It is skinny, nearly hairless, small, and nocturnal. These traits are all advantageous in the Chihuahua’s natural environment. A dog which is more hairless than the other dogs may be able to conserve energy. The hairlessness allows the dog to maintain a cooler temperature and therefore expend less energy on panting or things like that. The dog will also dehydrate at a slower rate. This has obvious advantages in a hot environment and may preserve the dog’s life in certain circumstances, thus allowing genetic continuation via mating. If a drought or heatwave hits, the other dogs may die off leaving only the more hairless dogs alive. Over time, dogs may begin to select mates for hairlessness out of preference. This is a chance happening, however, over generations and generations more and more droughts and heatwaves may occur. Eventually, survival would be selected based on hairlessness and preference for hairlessness in a mate. A dog may survive one generation due to hairlessness and reproduce, having for example five offspring. Three have hair, one is hairless, and one has hair but also a behavioral mutation which gives the organism a preference for hairless mates. Perhaps no droughts and heatwaves occur, or at least none as extreme as the previous generation, and the second generation of dogs may find mates and reproduce. The three with hair and no preference for hairlessness mate with other normal haired Chihuahuas, the hairless one mates with a haired Chihuahua, and the one with a preference for hairlessness finds a hairless mate. All of the normal haired Chihuahua’s offspring are hairy. However, fifty percent of the hairless one’s are hairless. Additionally, fifty percent of the dog with a preference for hairless mates’ offspring are hairless as well. A drought and heatwave hits the region and all normal haired Chihuahuas die off. In this fashion, not only have environmental consequences selected for the trait of hairlessness but they have also selected to an equal extent for the behavioral trait of hairless preference.
Without explaining too much more about the Mendelian constructs explained in the reading, these evolutionary concepts can be applied to more organisms that simply Chihuahuas. The same selection pressures are occurring on humans. Well, not exactly the same; humans are relatively impervious to many natural selection risks that other organisms still face. For instance, heat and drought have effectively been redirected with indoor plumbing and air conditioning. Humans still face natural threats from outside organisms but to a much lesser extent that other members of the plant and animal kingdom. The primary pressures faced by humans are artificial and societally generated. As we are constantly in a progressing world and stasis is impossible, these traits are advantageous in certain areas of the world (or events, or timeframes, or social groups) but not necessarily in others. Consider the Chihuahua lashed to a dogsled in the Yukon. This brings me to my question.
Given that selection pressures are unique to individuals, one may postulate that individuals raised in impoverished or ‘starving’ environments may display a preference for mates with high yield nutrient storage. In other words, do resource hungry people display a behavioral preference for large body type mates? Using the a priori method, this seems relatively logical and highly testable. My hypothesis is that yes, resource hungry people unconsciously seek out mates with high nutrient storage body types (efficient, fat, whatever) as a behavioral means of increasing the functioning level of the next generation in an impoverished environment. The variables that could be measured are socio-economic status and availability of food and other resources as well as body fat percentage in preferential mates. This would of course require refinement on several levels and there are many variables to be accounted for…However, I still believe that the evidence could be collected (evidence being measurements of abundance of resources for the region, mate preference of the region, abundance of resources to the individual in relation to the region, mate preference in relation to the region, and perhaps some measurements of prior abundance for the region or the individual as some areas may have experienced the environmental stimuli to trigger a behavioral shift followed by a change in level of resources). The hypothesis could be refuted with data that proves the contrary.
Some seemingly maladaptive traits may develop in societies for a variety of reasons. The two traits I would like to examine are the underfeeding of women in pregnancy the phobias about bathing in Europe (the two examples given). Maladaptive traits are, in my opinion, more likely to appear in cultural domains that are more controlled by humans and less decided by threats in nature.
In the specific example of Indian mothers reducing food intake, underfeeding the fetus while in utero and also immediately after birth seem maladaptive for nutritional reasons. However, fitness is not based solely on the survival of the single organism, as explained in the readings, but rather includes the Hamilton Effect. This maladaptive trait probably first developed out of necessity. There may not have been food around during drought and famine years and so fetuses that required higher levels of food intake in the womb died off. Premature children may have required less food intake after birth and therefore been more adapted to life in a starving community. Additionally, the risk of death for the mother may have been reduced with a smaller infant, thus decreasing the fitness of the infant may have increased the fitness of the mother and child tandem and therefore increased the fitness for the child. These maladaptive traits are difficult to truly describe as maladaptive considering they are quite obviously adaptive in certain environments (otherwise they would not have developed). Indeed, in the example of reduced levels of bathing in Europe, the ‘phobia’ of bathing (actually more likely a general overarching phobia of water) probably served humans well for countless winters. In a frigid environment, exposure to water means a dramatic increase in risk for hypothermia. Contracting an illness, however dangerous and painful it may be, was often a better option (before the plague) when it came to survival than the quick freezing death that came with bathing during winter time.
The former of these two examples (mothers reducing their food intake) could be studied in a variety of ways. Surveys could be given to populations in which this occurs in order to measure food distribution, level of socioeconomic status, and expectations for future resources. The hypothesis would be that this seemingly maladaptive practice occurs primarily in societies in which starvation is a real and pressing issue. In the latter of the two examples, constructing a study would involve surveys detailing the place of residence and geographical origin of the genetics (a family from Japan that immigrated to Sweden would not be expected to display the same practices as an indigenous family), the temperature of the region, and the prevalence of water and disease in the area. The hypothesis would be that organisms from colder regions would be less likely to optional exposure to water than those from warmer regions. Conversely, these organisms would hypothetically also be more fit for dealing with hypothermia and water in general; however, a phobia of a threat and an ability to cope with a threat are not exclusive adaptations and most likely occur together.
If we ignore the male population completely, the offspring at generation 5 should be composed of roughly 3.02% non-handwashers and 96.98% handwashers. If we include the first generation, generation 0 or the initial 200 total female individuals being measured, we end up with 5.87% of the population being handwashers after five generations (including generation 0 as the first of the generations).
Many traits that may seem maladaptive can gain prominence in a population due to variable selection pressures. A turtle’s shell seemed maladaptive until it proved through trial and error (and much loss of turtle life) to be an effective defense technique. The difficulty with explaining adaptations as adaptive or maladaptive arises when one considers that effective and ineffective are artificial terms being used to describe natural processes. Additionally, they can only be truly measured in the past tense after determining whether or not something worked (an adaptation). To utilize another idea from nature, the suckerfish that cleans the sharks teeth would seem to have developed a horrible and suicidal adaptation if not for data that point to the contrary.
Human brains have developed in cognitively complex fashion and have elevated beyond the usual pressures found in the world by other organisms (those of starvation, predation, and other elemental forces not created by man) and increasingly live in a world defined by hypotheticals. A seemingly maladaptive brain which shows no response to threat situations involving its own life showing indifference to mortality could develop for a variety of reasons. It could be an adaptation to another adaptation that occurs in the population. For instance, one adaptation within a species may begin to develop which utilizes caution and backs down from confrontation in order to increase survival odds. This behavior and trait combination may become prominent in the population due to the high level of reproductive success that individuals which avoid fights enjoy. In contrast to this, a mutation and subsequent adaptation may develop in which a member of the cautious species becomes overly aggressive. In this instance, let us assume that the selection pressures acting on the species are relatively similar to humans in that there are few threats from other species. In this example, the single organism which develops a hyper aggressive stance, or perhaps an indifference to mortality threats, may have much to gain. In competitions for mates and resources, we can safely assume that a behaviorally dominant organism will demonstrate superior ability in competition with other more submissive members of the same species. In this fashion, indifference to mortality may be adaptive in a population which enjoys few threats from other species and has adapted a cautious and passive approach. In other words, indifference to mortality is beneficial in a population which is hyper sensitive to mortality despite its relatively low level of statistical prominence.
Because mortality is not a very large problem for most human populations (in comparison with other species), a low level of caution can be expected to develop in these populations. Since humans only real selection pressures come from mate selection and competition with other human beings, it can be expected that the species would develop two distinct survival techniques. These are referred to as ‘fight or flight.’ Humans in less densely and more recently populated areas are more than likely those which have elected the ‘flight’ portion of this dichotomy, electing not to confront other humans in such situations but rather to move to different habitations with less competition for resources and mates. Those which develop a ‘fight’ response can be expected to remain relatively near their place of origin. This can be deduced when analyzing this archetype. Utilizing an A Priori method, these organisms are likely the progeny of generations of organisms which stayed in densely populated regions and succeeded (through some sort of ‘fight,’ though this does not necessarily imply physicality) in achieving resources and mates. Thus Mesopotamia, the first known region of inhabitance by man, can be expected to be a relatively violent region. Indeed, it does seem the case that the regions with the longest duration of occupation by humans tend to be the most violent, regardless of their resource composition. It stands to reason that those organisms who best utilized game theory and Machiavellian intelligence survived and reproduced. It also stands to reason that those who feared mortality would eventually seek out other habitations in areas with high levels of warfare. Eventually, I would postulate, if a region remained populated and disputed over for a long enough period of time, the population would dwindle in number of members which acknowledged mortality. Basically, in times of war, if reproduction is constant and warfare is constant then all surviving members would eventually shed the maladaptive fear of mortality behavior in favor of a less inhibiting adaptation, specifically that of fearlessness and even hostility.
To sum it up, to claim that a trait or behavior is maladaptive is often a one sided and ethnocentric evaluation of such adaptations. Cultural selections and natural selections can be difficult to distinguish. Cultural traits, seen in this light, seem to contribute to and be influenced by natural selection. They cannot really be disentangled. Additionally, indifference to mortality is difficult to quantify at best. Is a possum indifferent to mortality? Traits that may seem strictly cultural can often be seen developing in other species which do not exhibit culture. The violence in Mesopotamia is equally explained by equatorial trends, socioeconomic structures, political strife, systematic and institutional exploitation, and resource distribution. On the other hand, these selection pressures dictate the adaptations that occur. It is in this manner that the two are forever intertwined. So, to conclude, the defining of a trait or behavior as adaptive or maladaptive is tricky to do in the present tense. Indifference to mortality could conceivably develop as an adaptive and maladaptive trait in a variety of environments and modes of development. Indifference to mortality is probably impossible to measure and so cannot really be defined, especially when considering that feigned indifference to mortality is a very adaptive possibility as well. Natural selection and cultural traits are infinitely linked because the two have never existed independently according to the history of the world presented. A brain which is indifferent to mortality could exist in certain contexts and environments and not others (for example, it could be triggered by things such as adrenaline, aggression, fear, hunger, etc.) as is shown relatively obviously in pit bulls.
Altruism (not the real kind) relies on a cultural phenomenon of what amounts to ‘IOUs.’ The explanation that altruism exists amongst humans due to the need for individuals to enhance their reputations is a valid one but it explains false altruism, not true altruism. Enhancing a reputation is a form of bartering as it is in a sense raising the stock of the individual. It is interesting to look at this phenomenon as being not strictly human. The explanation of altruism as occurring for reputational needs relies and reciprocation. Here it should be noted that this is not true altruism because reputation is a representation of power in the same way that money is. Reputation can be viewed as a representation of abstract resources. In this fashion, reputation is not a sufficient explanation for altruism. It explains half of altruism. The unexplained half is that the behavior is selected for in other organisms. In other words, the reputation preceded the man. The complex reciprocity would have to be selected for due to the effectiveness of the behavior of increasing a reputation. However, the disappearance of this need for reciprocity, or true altruism, would have to be selected for by a population which valued altruism. In other words, humans would have to influence their own evolution and adaptation in order to become truly altruistic. However, this behavior would still be maladaptive and therefore could only exist as long as the species maintained its position of dominance within the environment.
Traditional examples include physical altruism such as that demonstrated by spiders and mantises after mating. The male sacrifices himself in order to provide the female with which he has recently mated a better nutritional intake. In doing so, he increases the likelihood of his brood developing fully. However, he also eliminates any further chances of spreading his genetics. In this way, it is somewhat a gamble. This is probably why most species do not demonstrate this behavior. For some reason, however, this has proven to be a useful adaptation for these predatory insect like creatures. This could be for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being the species’ unique niche in the environment. The position occupied within the food chain by these creatures is very different than many other species. The organisms are not social. In fact, mating is the only real need these organisms have for interacting peaceably with any other creature. While they have many natural predators, they are not the primary food source for any of them, perhaps due to the wide variety of species of insects and arthropods. However, the risk of predation for these species is high. When they reproduce, they reproduce by laying hundreds of eggs. When one takes into account the relatively low chance of meeting another member of the same species let alone a female receptive to mating and compare it with the relatively high chance of death before such an encounter, it is no wonder these species interact as such (especially with clutch sizes so large). These species incorporate an all or nothing approach to reproduction.
In larger and more human like creatures, specifically mammalian species, herd animals will occasionally demonstrate what appears to be altruistic behavior. This is understandable and one would think that all social animals would demonstrate altruism. However, this is not necessarily true. Upon closer inspection, many of these animals simply rely on a safety in numbers approach and actually demonstrate very little ‘care’ towards other members of the group. Cattle and bison protect their young by keeping them in the middle of the herd, but this is much more an instinctual behavior than altruism. The same could be said for the insects, however, and perhaps for humans as well. When one considers that cultural adaptations that we deem to be ‘conscious’ and not ‘instinctual’ as uniquely human and a side effect of being greater in some way compared with the rest of the animal kingdom, it is easy to see humans as demonstrating altruism. However, even the usage of the scientific method could be broken down as an adaptive behavior. If one insists on distinguishing ‘culture’ as a uniquely human phenomenon, then altruism appears to be genuine and not just a vague attempt to garner favor and reciprocity. However, culture in humans can also be viewed as an advanced form of the territorialism demonstrated in other species. Prides of lions and packs of monkeys will fight of other competing groups, even of the same species. Wolves demonstrate complex hierarchies and power structures between members. Many of the behaviors are consistent across individuals within the species, but from an non-human centered perspective these behaviors carry the same weight as human interactions.
One ability that separates humans from other species is our ability to think from different perspectives. Certain high functioning apes have demonstrated the ability to use a mirror, a seemingly simple concept, but most animals cannot. This is because the cognition needed to think objectively is theorized not to be present in most species. Therefore, humans may see reciprocity as having slightly more dimensions than other species. In fact, this is true. Humans are capable of not only judging who has resources in the moment but also who will have resources in the future. The concept of agriculture, or horticulture, the concept of farming in general is a clear demonstration of humans’ ability to plan. Other species do demonstrate such behaviors, like birds migrating, but with less ability to manipulate the environment and less resource control amongst these species, ‘altruism,’ real or feigned, does not seem to have any benefit to the organisms.
Humans trade with one another and have adapted a vastly superior means for extracting resources from the environment than any other species. Superior, in this case, is operationally defined by the ability to amass these resources, sheer quantities. Humans have discovered means to utilize many naturally occurring things that are generally overlooked by other species. In this manner, humans have adapted towards specialization. In a wolf pack, there may be certain members which perform the kill and hunt, but in human beings, the hunt has become so complex and the quarry so abstract that a stratified specialization has occurred on an in group level and proven to be adaptive, especially in intergroup competition. Because of this specialization and the territorial nature of humans, barter and trade has long been a staple of human survival. This really does not occur in other species, definitely not to the extent in which it occurs in humans. This bartering is the fundamental driving force behind much of human adaptation since natural threats such as starvation and predation were essentially eliminated due to advanced cognitive functioning, a mutation that has affected humans in such complex ways as to make it impractical to write about at this junction. Possession probably preceded bartering, as one human or group of humans probably attempted to act as gatekeepers to a required resource and restricted other humans’ access to it. Eventually, there could be enough of these possessors that trade would not be an option for survival. The distribution of resources can never be even but it can also never be stable as the relative value of resources is changing all the time. If this is the case, then a human can never really be certain which other human’s help or resources it will require next. In this manner, it is adaptive to keep all other organisms on good terms.
One modern example of altruism could be the act of a wealthy person donating money to a charity. This seems self-defeating from a strictly economical perspective. This individual could be doing it for a variety of reasons. They could be attempting to garner public respect and fame for themselves or others they are affiliated with. They could be doing it for tax breaks. They could have a genuine concern for the charity. However, regardless of the person’s intentions, they have appeared generous. Humans value genuine generosity in others because it signals to them that they may qualify for some free stuff. Altruism could occur under certain complex situations. First of all, the human must have enough resources to both be altruistic and survive. Giving away all of one’s resources is not adaptive, especially if the organisms receiving the resources are not altruistic or reciprocity prone in return. Reciprocity is different from altruism in that it implies an expected return. However, if the individual has continuous access to a resource and is encouraged be altruistic (the environment selects in favor of altruism), this behavior may exist in a population for a short period of time. Eventually, however, this adaptation seems unnatural and fundamentally weak in nature and only seems possible in artificial environments. Conversely, humans have lived in artificial environments for a great deal of time now. Since humans have cracked the code of natural selection, the ability to pass on traits and behaviors that may be maladaptive has increased. There is no telling what traits a species will select in favor of if the natural selection pressures of its environment are nullified.
To conclude, it has taken me a long time to figure out why altruism may occur. False altruism may occur for a variety of reasons, all of which are some preemptive format of the reciprocity trait. Performance of a task with expectation of reciprocity is not altruism. However, true altruism (giving without any conscious or subconscious expectation or hope for reciprocation) could only develop in a manipulated environment. Considering nearly all humans are now raised and bred in a test tube of their own design, such a behavior could hypothetically become adaptive (since being adaptive and maladaptive have become much more plastic due to humans ever increasingly safe niche in the environment in which we live). However, it seems improbably that such a behavior or trait would be longstanding in a population due to the simple existence of other strategies for resource collection. The behavior could become prominent, but since false altruism is so difficult to detect in humans it seems inevitable that the behavior will become maladaptive. Altruism is a side effect of humans’ robust dominance of their habitat. This dominance often leads to selection for reasons other than fitness and often times leads the species in such a position to extinction. To conclude, altruism is maladaptive and so could only occur in a situation in which a species had no external threats for an extended period of time.
The way in which to maximize return rate would be to expend as little energy as possible. In order to maximize foraging return rate, fishermen can be expected to do as little travelling as possible. Time spent at the fishing hole is a fixed rate, being four hours, or two hundred and forty minutes. If the fishing holes are spaced out fifteen minutes apart, then each additional fishing hole that the fishermen attended would cost an additional fifteen minutes in the denominator, thus increasing the total expenditure of energy by using kilos at a faster rate.
If we find, for instance as given in the example, that fishermen actually spend seventeen minutes fishing at each hole, there could be a variety of explanations. One explanation may be the variability of the viability of each fishing hole. Spending time fishing at a hole that is frozen in or void of fish is time wasted. Perhaps after trial and error the fishermen have either intuitively or subconsciously formulated a theory for statistical success, this being that time spent fishing beyond the said seventeen minutes is time wasted. This could be due to the efficacy level of the fishermen’s ability, meaning that after seventeen minutes, they safely assume that the entire localized area of the fishing hole has been surveyed and fished clean, yielding either the catch from that area or nothing, either way indicating completion. This could occur for a variety of reasons and is understandable. If one were gathering plants, one would not spend unnecessarily large amounts of time harvesting a small region, and in fact we see a trend with horticulturalists to disperse crops. This probably translated into fishing techniques, and in fact, yes, we notice that modern fishing techniques involve dispersal of nets. This leads me to believe that it is simply more effective to vary the grounds on which one ‘hunts’ or fishes. While spending all four hours fishing at one location may allow a maximum intake of kilos, it may not be the best technique long term due to the nature of the resource, fish. The men could conceivable fish the area dry or the fish could begin to avoid the area due to the high likelihood of being eaten.
The fishermen may also spend limited time at one fishing hole for other reasons. It probably helps to avoid predators or competition from other fishermen. Also, this may couple with other mechanisms, such as territorialism. In fishing multiple holes, the men are simultaneously patrolling the region. This is adaptive and many species exhibit this behavior. Along this line it is important to note that maximizing foraging return rate is not the only thing that organisms are concerned with, as survival is much more complex than that. Movement from hole to hole requires exertion, which ends up being exercise. Higher levels of physical fitness correlate with higher survival and reproduction rates. Additionally, there are many advantages that organisms experience from increased territorial range. These include but are not limited to a larger likelihood of meeting more potential mates and therefore a higher propensity for reproduction, a larger body of experience and therefore knowledge of the real world from which to pool knowledge and therefore power, and access to a greater amount and diversity of other goods besides simply fish along the way.
To conclude, in order to maximize caloric intake, it would be expected that the fishermen would simply fish at the closest hole all day. They do not because caloric intake is only one of many needs driving the fishermen.
tigertankdemolition 