Many researchers assume that until 10–12,000 years ago, humans lived in small, mobile,
relatively egalitarian bands. This “nomadic-egalitarian model” suffuses the social sciences. It …

Definitions of our species as unique within the hominin clade have tended to focus on
differences in capacities for symbolism, language, social networking, technological …

Humans are a puzzling species. On the one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the
wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters …

Human cooperation is highly unusual. We live in large groups composed mostly of non-
relatives. Evolutionists have proposed a number of explanations for this pattern, including …

Control of fire is one of the most important technological innovations within the evolution of
humankind. The archaeological signal of fire use becomes very visible from around 400,000 …

Much attention has been focused on control of fire in human evolution and the impact of
cooking on anatomy, social, and residential arrangements. However, little is known about …

Complex technologies used in most human societies are beyond the inventive capacities of
individuals. Instead, they result from a cumulative process in which innovations are …

Convergent developments across social scientific disciplines provide evidence that ritual is
a psychologically prepared, culturally inherited, behavioral trademark of our species. We …

The social organization of mobile hunter-gatherers has several derived features, including
low within-camp relatedness and fluid meta-groups. Although these features have been …

Mobile hunter-gatherers are often characterized as living in small communities where
mobility and group size are products of the environmentally determined distribution of …