Information transmission and the oral tradition: Evidence of a late-life service niche for Tsimane Amerindians.

Storytelling can affect wellbeing and fitness by transmitting information and reinforcing cultural codes of conduct. Despite their potential importance, the development and timing of storytelling skills, and the transmission of story knowledge have received minimal attention in studies of subsistence societies that more often focus on food production skills. Here we examine how storytelling and patterns of information transmission among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists are predicted by the changing age profiles of storytellers' abilities and accumulated experience. We find that storytelling skills are most developed among older adults who demonstrate superior knowledge of traditional stories and who report telling stories most. We find that the important information transmitted via storytelling typically flows from older to younger generations, and stories are primarily learned from older same-sex relatives, especially grandparents. Our findings suggest that the oral tradition provides a specialized late-life service niche for Tsimane adults who have accumulated important experience and knowledge relevant to foraging and sociality, but have lost comparative advantage in other productive domains. These findings may help extend our understanding of the evolved human life history by illustrating how changes in embodied capital predict the development of information transmission services in a forager-horticulturalist economy.

Regulatory adaptations for delivering information: The case of confession.

Prior to, or concurrent with, the encoding of concepts into speech, the individual faces decisions about whether, what, when, how, and with whom to communicate. Compared to the existing wealth of linguistic knowledge however, we know little of the mechanisms that govern the delivery and accrual of information. Here we focus on a fundamental issue of communication: The decision whether to deliver information. Specifically, we study spontaneous confession to a victim. Given the costs of social devaluation, offenders are hypothesized to refrain from confessing unless the expected benefits of confession (e.g. enabling the victim to remedially modify their course of action) outweigh its marginal costs-the victim's reaction, discounted by the likelihood that information about the offense has not leaked. The logic of welfare tradeoffs indicates that the victim's reaction will be less severe and, therefore, less costly to the offender, with decreases in the cost of the offense to the victim and, counter-intuitively, with increases in the benefit of the offense to the offender. Data from naturalistic offenses and experimental studies supported these predictions. Offenders are more willing to confess when the benefit of the offense to them is high, the cost to the victim is low, and the probability of information leakage is high. This suggests a conflict of interests between senders and receivers: Often, offenders are more willing to confess when confessions are less beneficial to the victims. An evolutionary-computational framework is a fruitful approach to understanding the factors that regulate communication.

Skill ontogeny among Tsimane forager-horticulturalists.

OBJECTIVES: We investigate whether age profiles of Tsimane forager-horticulturalists' reported skill development are consistent with predictions derived from life history theory about the timing of productivity and reproduction. Previous studies of forager skill development have often focused on a few abilities (e.g. hunting), and neglected the broad range of skills and services typical of forager economies (e.g. childcare, craft production, music performance, story-telling). MATERIALS AND METHODS: By systematically examining age patterns in reported acquisition, proficiency, and expertise across a broad range of activities including food production, childcare, and other services, we provide the most complete skill development study of a traditional subsistence society to date. RESULTS: Our results show that: (1) most essential skills are acquired prior to first reproduction, then developed further so that their productive returns meet the increasing demands of dependent offspring during adulthood; (2) as postreproductive adults age beyond earlier years of peak performance, they report developing additional conceptual and procedural proficiency, and despite greater physical frailty than younger adults, are consensually regarded as the most expert (especially in music and storytelling), consistent with their roles as providers and educators. We find that adults have accurate understandings of their skillsets and skill levels -an important awareness for social exchange, comparison, learning, and pedagogy. DISCUSSION: These findings extend our understanding of the evolved human life history by illustrating how changes in embodied capital and the needs of dependent offspring predict the development of complementary skills and services in a forager-horticulturalist economy.

Better-than-chance prediction of cooperative behaviour from first and second impressions.

Could cooperation among strangers be facilitated by adaptations that use sparse information to accurately predict cooperative behaviour? We hypothesise that predictions are influenced by beliefs, descriptions, appearance and behavioural history available for first and second impressions. We also hypothesise that predictions improve when more information is available. We conducted a two-part study. First, we recorded thin-slice videos of university students just before their choices in a repeated Prisoner's Dilemma with matched partners. Second, a worldwide sample of raters evaluated each player using videos, photos, only gender labels or neither images nor labels. Raters guessed players' first-round Prisoner's Dilemma choices and then their second-round choices after reviewing first-round behavioural histories. Our design allows us to investigate incremental effects of gender, appearance and behavioural history gleaned during first and second impressions. Predictions become more accurate and better-than-chance when gender, appearance or behavioural history is added. However, these effects are not incrementally cumulative. Predictions from treatments showing player appearance were no more accurate than those from treatments revealing gender labels and predictions from videos were no more accurate than those from photos. These results demonstrate how people accurately predict cooperation under sparse information conditions, helping explain why conditional cooperation is common among strangers.

Risk and the evolution of human exchange.

Compared with other species, exchange among non-kin is a hallmark of human sociality in both the breadth of individuals and total resources involved. One hypothesis is that extensive exchange evolved to buffer the risks associated with hominid dietary specialization on calorie dense, large packages, especially from hunting. 'Lucky' individuals share food with 'unlucky' individuals with the expectation of reciprocity when roles are reversed. Cross-cultural data provide prima facie evidence of pair-wise reciprocity and an almost universal association of high-variance (HV) resources with greater exchange. However, such evidence is not definitive; an alternative hypothesis is that food sharing is really 'tolerated theft', in which individuals possessing more food allow others to steal from them, owing to the threat of violence from hungry individuals. Pair-wise correlations may reflect proximity providing greater opportunities for mutual theft of food. We report a laboratory experiment of foraging and food consumption in a virtual world, designed to test the risk-reduction hypothesis by determining whether people form reciprocal relationships in response to variance of resource acquisition, even when there is no external enforcement of any transfer agreements that might emerge. Individuals can forage in a high-mean, HV patch or a low-mean, low-variance (LV) patch. The key feature of the experimental design is that individuals can transfer resources to others. We find that sharing hardly occurs after LV foraging, but among HV foragers sharing increases dramatically over time. The results provide strong support for the hypothesis that people are pre-disposed to evaluate gains from exchange and respond to unsynchronized variance in resource availability through endogenous reciprocal trading relationships.

Geochemistry and Provenance of Springs in a Baja California Sur Mountain Catchment.

Fractured rock aquifers cover much of Earth's surface and are important mountain sites for groundwater recharge but are poorly understood. To investigate groundwater systematics of a fractured-dominated aquifer in Baja California Sur, Mexico, we examined the spatial patterns of aquifer recharge and connectivity using the geochemistry of springs. We evaluate a range of geochemical data within the context of two endmember hypotheses describing spatial recharge patterns and fracture connectivity. Hypothesis 1 is that the aquifer system is segmented, and springs are fed by local recharge. Hypothesis 2 is that the aquifer system is well connected, with dominant recharge occurring in the higher elevations. The study site is a small <15 km2 catchment. Thirty-four distinct springs and two wells were identified in the study area, and 24 of these sites were sampled for geochemical analyses along an elevation gradient and canyon transect. These analyses included major ion composition, trace element and strontium isotopes, δ18 O and δ2 H isotopes, radiocarbon, and tritium. δ18 O and δ2 H isotopes suggest that the precipitation feeding the groundwater system has at least two distinct sources. Carbon isotopes showed a change along the canyon transect, suggesting that shorter flowpaths feed springs in the top of the transect, and longer flowpaths discharge near the bottom. Geochemical interpretations support a combination of the two proposed hypotheses. Understanding of the connectivity and provenance of these springs is significant as they are the primary source of water for the communities that inhabit this region and may be impacted by changes in recharge and use.

Age-Appropriate Wisdom? : Ethnobiological Knowledge Ontogeny in Pastoralist Mexican Choyeros.

We investigate whether age profiles of ethnobiological knowledge development are consistent with predictions derived from life history theory about the timing of productivity and reproduction. Life history models predict complementary knowledge profiles developing across the lifespan for women and men as they experience changes in embodied capital and the needs of dependent offspring. We evaluate these predictions using an ethnobiological knowledge assessment tool developed for an off-grid pastoralist population known as Choyeros, from Baja California Sur, Mexico. Our results indicate that while individuals acquire knowledge of most dangerous items and edible resources by early adulthood, knowledge of plants and animals relevant to the age and sex divided labor domains and ecologies (e.g., women's house gardens, men's herding activities in the wilderness) continues to develop into middle adulthood but to different degrees and at different rates for men and women. As the demands of offspring on parents accumulate with age, reproductive-aged adults continue to develop their knowledge to meet their children's needs. After controlling for vision, our analysis indicates that many post-reproductive adults show the greatest ethnobiological knowledge. These findings extend our understanding of the evolved human life history by illustrating how changes in embodied capital and the needs of dependent offspring predict the development of men's and women's ethnobiological knowledge across the lifespan.

Gender, Stereotypes, and Trust in Communication.

Gender differences in dishonesty and mistrust have been reported across cultures and linked to stereotypes about females being more trustworthy and trusting. Here we focus on fundamental issues of trust-based communication that may be affected by gender: the decisions whether to honestly deliver private information and whether to trust that this delivered information is honest. Using laboratory experiments that model trust-based strategic communication and response, we examined the relationship between gender, gender stereotypes, and gender discriminative lies and challenges. Drawing from a student sample, we presented males and females (N = 80) with incentivized stereotype elicitation tasks that reveal their expectations of lies and challenges from each gender, followed by a series of strategic communication interactions within and between genders. Before interacting, both genders stereotyped females as more trustworthy (expected to send more honest messages) and more trusting (expected to accept and not challenge others' messages) than males, in accord with cross-cultural gender differences. In best response to these stereotypes, both genders discriminately accepted or challenged messages based on the sender's gender. However, we find no differences between males' and females' overall rates of lies and challenges. After learning the results of their strategic interactions, males and females revised their stereotypes about lies and challenges expected of each gender; these stereotype revisions resulted in greater predictive accuracy and less disparate gender discrimination. This suggests an important facultative feature of human trust-based communication and gender stereotyping: while the delivery and trust of private information is informed by gender stereotypes, these stereotypes are recalibrated with experience.

The role of dispersal and school attendance on reproductive dynamics in small, dispersed populations: Choyeros of Baja California Sur, Mexico.

Individuals from small populations face challenges to initiating reproduction because stochastic demographic processes create local mate scarcity. In response, flexible dispersal patterns that facilitate the movement of individuals across groups have been argued to reduce mate search costs and inbreeding depression. Furthermore, factors that aggregate dispersed peoples, such as rural schools, could lower mate search costs through expansion of mating markets. However, research suggests that dispersal and school attendance are costly to fertility, causing individuals to delay marriage and reproduction. Here, we investigate the role of dispersal and school attendance on marriage and reproductive outcomes using a sample of 54 married couples from four small, dispersed ranching communities in Baja California Sur, Mexico. Our analyses yield three sets of results that challenge conventional expectations. First, we find no evidence that dispersal is associated with later age at marriage or first reproduction for women. For men, dispersal is associated with younger ages of marriage than those who stay in their natal area. Second, in contrast to research suggesting that dispersal decreases inbreeding, we find that female dispersal is associated with an increase in genetic relatedness among marriage partners. This finding suggests that human dispersal promotes female social support from genetic kin in novel locales for raising offspring. Third, counter to typical results on the role of education on reproductive timing, school attendance is associated with younger age at marriage for men and younger age at first birth for women. While we temper causal interpretations and claims of generalizability beyond our study site given our small sample sizes (a feature of small populations), we nonetheless argue that factors like dispersal and school attendance, which are typically associated with delayed reproduction in large population, may actually lower mate search costs in small, dispersed populations with minimal access to labor markets.

Marriage dynamics in old Lower California: ecological constraints and reproductive value in an arid peninsular frontier.

It is commonly expected that natural selection will favor earlier reproduction, yet ecological constraints can force people to delay marriage. Furthermore, humans demonstrate sex-specific preferences in marriage partners - with grooms normally a few years older than their brides; however, the age at which individuals marry can influence the spousal age gap. We investigate factors influencing age at first marriage and age difference at marriage using nineteenth-century historical demographic data from Baja California Sur, Mexico. Analyses suggest ecological constraints affected male, but not female, age at first marriage. Males who migrated from their natal community and who married in communities whose primary economic activity was agriculture experienced delayed age at first marriage. The age at which females first married increased over time causing a reduction in the age gap between spouses. Furthermore, the spousal age gap showed sex-specific effects: women who married early in life were much younger than their husbands, while women who married late in life were older than their husbands, suggesting that variation in female reproductive value influenced mate choice. Males, on the other hand, who married late in life showed a preference for marrying much younger females, indicating preferences for females with high reproductive value.

Differences between sons and daughters in the intergenerational transmission of wealth.

Persistent interest lies in gender inequality, especially with regard to the favouring of sons over daughters. Economists are concerned with how privilege is transmitted across generations, and anthropologists have long studied sex-biased inheritance norms. There has, however, been no focused cross-cultural investigation of how parent-offspring correlations in wealth vary by offspring sex. We estimate these correlations for 38 wealth measures, including somatic and relational wealth, from 15 populations ranging from hunter-gatherers to small-scale farmers. Although small sample sizes limit our statistical power, we find no evidence of ubiquitous male bias, at least as inferred from comparing parent-son and parent-daughter correlations. Rather we find wide variation in signatures of sex bias, with evidence of both son and daughter-biased transmission. Further, we introduce a model that helps pinpoint the conditions under which simple mid-point parent-offspring wealth correlations can reveal information about sex-biased parental investment. Our findings are relevant to the study of female-biased kinship by revealing just how little normative descriptors of kinship systems, such as patrilineal inheritance, capture intergenerational correlations in wealth, and how variable parent-son and parent-daughter correlations can be. This article is part of the theme issue 'The evolution of female-biased kinship in humans and other mammals'.

Kinship ties across the lifespan in human communities.

A hypothesis for the evolution of long post-reproductive lifespans in the human lineage involves asymmetries in relatedness between young immigrant females and the older females in their new groups. In these circumstances, inter-generational reproductive conflicts between younger and older females are predicted to resolve in favour of the younger females, who realize fewer inclusive fitness benefits from ceding reproduction to others. This conceptual model anticipates that immigrants to a community initially have few kin ties to others in the group, gradually showing greater relatedness to group members as they have descendants who remain with them in the group. We examine this prediction in a cross-cultural sample of communities, which vary in their sex-biased dispersal patterns and other aspects of social organization. Drawing on genealogical and demographic data, the analysis provides general but not comprehensive support for the prediction that average relatedness of immigrants to other group members increases as they age. In rare cases, natal members of the community also exhibit age-related increases in relatedness. We also find large variation in the proportion of female group members who are immigrants, beyond simple traditional considerations of patrilocality or matrilocality, which raises questions about the circumstances under which this hypothesis of female competition are met. We consider possible explanations for these heterogenous results, and we address methodological considerations that merit increased attention for research on kinship and reproductive conflict in human societies. This article is part of the theme issue 'The evolution of female-biased kinship in humans and other mammals'.

Culture sometimes matters: intra-cultural variation in pro-social behavior among Tsimane Amerindians.

Agent-centered models usually consider only individual-level variables in calculations of economic costs and benefits. There has been little consideration of social or cultural history on shaping payoffs in ways that impact decisions. To examine the role of local expectations on economic behavior, we explore whether village affiliation accounts for the variation in Dictator Game offers among the Tsimane of the Bolivian Amazon independently of other factors that could confound such an effect. Our analysis shows that significant differences in altruistic giving exist among villages, village patterns are recognized by residents, and offers likely reflect variation in social expectations rather than stable differences in norms of fairness.

Experimental tests of the tolerated theft and risk-reduction theories of resource exchange.

Here we report the results of an experiment that tests the reciprocal risk reduction 1 and 'tolerated theft' or taking hypotheses 2 for why the human species is unique in having extensive exchange of resources among non-kin. We designed an experiment to determine whether, in response to variance of resource acquisition, people exchange food resources via taking or, alternatively, form reciprocal relationships based on giving. In the experiment, subjects forage individually, experience variation in resource acquisition, and then consume either by actions in which resources are taken from, or moved to, others in a group environment. The key feature of the experimental design is that individuals can transfer resources to others, attempt to take resources from others and defend against take-away attempts. Many subjects begin by attempting to take resources from others, who can resist those attempts at a cost to each. Over time, subjects shift to a cooperative strategy of voluntary reciprocal giving, a response not suggested by the instructions. These results provide evidence that people are independently able to overcome initial use of taking strategies, evaluate gains from exchange, and create endogenous reciprocal trading relationships as a response to unsynchronized variance in resource availability.

Functional Disability and Social Conflict Increase Risk of Depression in Older Adulthood Among Bolivian Forager-Farmers.

OBJECTIVES: To present an explanatory framework for depression in older adulthood in a small-scale society. We propose that depression is a consequence of functional disability, which can reduce subsistence productivity and resource transfers within and across generations. Social conflict can also disrupt resource flows and should be associated with depression. METHOD: To evaluate depression among Tsimane forager-farmers of Bolivia, we developed a reliable interview based on focus groups and a review of validated depression scales. Older adults (mean ± SD age = 62 ± 9, n = 325) were recruited regardless of their health status. Demographic, economic, and medical data were collected during annual censuses and routine medical exams. RESULTS: Depression is associated with reduced energetic status, greater physical limitations, and reduced subsistence involvement after controlling for potential confounds such as age, sex, number of reported unresolved conflicts, and market involvement. Depression is also associated with greater reported conflict, particularly with non-kin. DISCUSSION: Tsimane depression is associated with disability, reduced subsistence productivity, and interpersonal conflict, all of which can disrupt resource flows. Depression appears to be a response to conditions regularly experienced over human history, and not simply a by-product of modernity.

Predictable and predictive emotions: explaining cheap signals and trust re-extension.

Despite normative predictions from economics and biology, unrelated strangers will often develop the trust necessary to reap gains from one-shot economic exchange opportunities. This appears to be especially true when declared intentions and emotions can be cheaply communicated. Perhaps even more puzzling to economists and biologists is the observation that anonymous and unrelated individuals, known to have breached trust, often make effective use of cheap signals, such as promises and apologies, to encourage trust re-extension. We used a pair of trust games with one-way communication and an emotion survey to investigate the role of emotions in regulating the propensity to message, apologize, re-extend trust, and demonstrate trustworthiness. This design allowed us to observe the endogenous emergence and natural distribution of trust-relevant behaviors, remedial strategies used by promise-breakers, their effects on behavior, and subsequent outcomes. We found that emotions triggered by interaction outcomes are predictable and also predict subsequent apology and trust re-extension. The role of emotions in behavioral regulation helps explain why messages are produced, when they can be trusted, and when trust will be re-extended.

Intergenerational wealth transmission and the dynamics of inequality in small-scale societies.

Small-scale human societies range from foraging bands with a strong egalitarian ethos to more economically stratified agrarian and pastoral societies. We explain this variation in inequality using a dynamic model in which a population's long-run steady-state level of inequality depends on the extent to which its most important forms of wealth are transmitted within families across generations. We estimate the degree of intergenerational transmission of three different types of wealth (material, embodied, and relational), as well as the extent of wealth inequality in 21 historical and contemporary populations. We show that intergenerational transmission of wealth and wealth inequality are substantial among pastoral and small-scale agricultural societies (on a par with or even exceeding the most unequal modern industrial economies) but are limited among horticultural and foraging peoples (equivalent to the most egalitarian of modern industrial populations). Differences in the technology by which a people derive their livelihood and in the institutions and norms making up the economic system jointly contribute to this pattern.