Cargando…
Modularity of food-sharing networks minimises the risk for individual and group starvation in hunter-gatherer societies
It has been argued that hunter-gatherers’ food-sharing may have provided the basis for a whole range of social interactions, and hence its study may provide important insight into the evolutionary origin of human sociality. Motivated by this observation, we propose a simple network optimization mode...
Autores principales: | , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2023
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10171659/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37163503 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272733 |
_version_ | 1785039469238288384 |
---|---|
author | Plana, Francisco Pérez, Jorge Abeliuk, Andrés |
author_facet | Plana, Francisco Pérez, Jorge Abeliuk, Andrés |
author_sort | Plana, Francisco |
collection | PubMed |
description | It has been argued that hunter-gatherers’ food-sharing may have provided the basis for a whole range of social interactions, and hence its study may provide important insight into the evolutionary origin of human sociality. Motivated by this observation, we propose a simple network optimization model inspired by a food-sharing dynamic that can recover some empirical patterns found in social networks. We focus on two of the main food-sharing drivers discussed by the anthropological literature: the reduction of individual starvation risk and the care for the group welfare or egalitarian access to food shares, and show that networks optimizing both criteria may exhibit a community structure of highly-cohesive groups around special agents that we call hunters, those who inject food into the system. These communities appear under conditions of uncertainty and scarcity in the food supply, which suggests their adaptive value in this context. We have additionally obtained that optimal welfare networks resemble social networks found in lab experiments that promote more egalitarian income distribution, and also distinct distributions of reciprocity among hunters and non-hunters, which may be consistent with some empirical reports on how sharing is distributed in waves, first among hunters, and then hunters with their families. These model results are consistent with the view that social networks functionally adaptive for optimal resource use, may have created the environment in which prosocial behaviors evolved. Finally, our model also relies on an original formulation of starvation risk, and it may contribute to a formal framework to proceed in this discussion regarding the principles guiding food-sharing networks. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-10171659 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2023 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-101716592023-05-11 Modularity of food-sharing networks minimises the risk for individual and group starvation in hunter-gatherer societies Plana, Francisco Pérez, Jorge Abeliuk, Andrés PLoS One Research Article It has been argued that hunter-gatherers’ food-sharing may have provided the basis for a whole range of social interactions, and hence its study may provide important insight into the evolutionary origin of human sociality. Motivated by this observation, we propose a simple network optimization model inspired by a food-sharing dynamic that can recover some empirical patterns found in social networks. We focus on two of the main food-sharing drivers discussed by the anthropological literature: the reduction of individual starvation risk and the care for the group welfare or egalitarian access to food shares, and show that networks optimizing both criteria may exhibit a community structure of highly-cohesive groups around special agents that we call hunters, those who inject food into the system. These communities appear under conditions of uncertainty and scarcity in the food supply, which suggests their adaptive value in this context. We have additionally obtained that optimal welfare networks resemble social networks found in lab experiments that promote more egalitarian income distribution, and also distinct distributions of reciprocity among hunters and non-hunters, which may be consistent with some empirical reports on how sharing is distributed in waves, first among hunters, and then hunters with their families. These model results are consistent with the view that social networks functionally adaptive for optimal resource use, may have created the environment in which prosocial behaviors evolved. Finally, our model also relies on an original formulation of starvation risk, and it may contribute to a formal framework to proceed in this discussion regarding the principles guiding food-sharing networks. Public Library of Science 2023-05-10 /pmc/articles/PMC10171659/ /pubmed/37163503 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272733 Text en © 2023 Plana et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Plana, Francisco Pérez, Jorge Abeliuk, Andrés Modularity of food-sharing networks minimises the risk for individual and group starvation in hunter-gatherer societies |
title | Modularity of food-sharing networks minimises the risk for individual and group starvation in hunter-gatherer societies |
title_full | Modularity of food-sharing networks minimises the risk for individual and group starvation in hunter-gatherer societies |
title_fullStr | Modularity of food-sharing networks minimises the risk for individual and group starvation in hunter-gatherer societies |
title_full_unstemmed | Modularity of food-sharing networks minimises the risk for individual and group starvation in hunter-gatherer societies |
title_short | Modularity of food-sharing networks minimises the risk for individual and group starvation in hunter-gatherer societies |
title_sort | modularity of food-sharing networks minimises the risk for individual and group starvation in hunter-gatherer societies |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10171659/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37163503 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272733 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT planafrancisco modularityoffoodsharingnetworksminimisestheriskforindividualandgroupstarvationinhuntergatherersocieties AT perezjorge modularityoffoodsharingnetworksminimisestheriskforindividualandgroupstarvationinhuntergatherersocieties AT abeliukandres modularityoffoodsharingnetworksminimisestheriskforindividualandgroupstarvationinhuntergatherersocieties |