Large-scale cooperation in small-scale foraging societies. Robert Boyd, Peter J. Richerson. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews. April 29 2022. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21944
Abstract: We present evidence that people in small-scale mobile hunter-gatherer societies cooperated in large numbers to produce collective goods. Foragers engaged in large-scale communal hunts and constructed shared capital facilities; they made shared investments in improving the local environment; and they participated in warfare, formed enduring alliances, and established trading networks. Large-scale collective action often played a crucial role in subsistence. The provision of public goods involved the cooperation of many individuals, so each person made only a small contribution. This evidence suggests that large-scale cooperation occurred in the Pleistocene societies that encompass most of human evolutionary history, and therefore it is unlikely that large-scale cooperation in Holocene food producing societies results from an evolved psychology shaped only in small-group interactions. Instead, large-scale human cooperation needs to be explained as an adaptation, likely rooted in distinctive features of human biology, grammatical language, increased cognitive ability, and cumulative cultural adaptation.
5.2.4 Iñupiaq in northwestern Alaska
During the first half of the 19th 560 century, Iñupiaq groups in western Alaska conducted regular
large-scale warfare against members of other Iñupiaq groups, Athabaskan speakers to the east, and
Chukchi people on the Asian side of the Bering Strait. Our knowledge of these events comes from
Iñupiaq ethnohistory collected by the anthropologist Ernest “Tiger” Burch100 563 who interviewed Iñupiaq elders about 19th 564 century Iñupiaq life, conflict and alliance. By collecting and collating many accounts of the same events, he was able to create a picture of Iñupiaq life before extensive contact with Europeans and North Americans.
The Iñupiaq economy was based on fishing and hunting large game, mainly caribou and marine
mammals. They lived in villages during the fall and winter, and then moved to fishing and hunting camps in the spring and summer. Population densities were about 1 person per 20 square kilometers, at the low end of the forager range. Villages ranged in size from 8 to 160 people, but 80% had less than 32 people.
People were collected into territorial groups that Burch refers to as nations. In the region
around Kotzebue Sound there were 10 nations with an average population size of 470 people and
average territory size of 8600 km2.
Burch100:140 recorded accounts of 77 raids and battles that occurred in the first half of the 19th 574
century. Like other foraging groups, attackers preferred surprise, nighttime raids. These occurred mainly in the fall because low temperatures meant that people would be inside at night, frozen rivers made travel easier, and the lack of snow made it difficult to track retreating raiders. Raiding parties armed with bows, lances and knives travelled long distances, sometimes as much as 300km each way, and never less than 80km.
Villages were centered around a community hall or qargi where men spent much of their evenings. Attackers hoped to surprise all the men in the qargi and kill them as they exited.
If the raid was successful, attackers killed everybody in the village. Sometimes young women were taken as slaves, but usually they were raped, tortured and killed100:104 582
The threat of raids prompted people to take defensive action. Some villages had defensive
stockades, and others were surrounded by fields of sharpened caribou bones driven into the ground,
much like the punji sticks used by Viet Cong fighters. They also built escape tunnels into the qargi.
Raiders were sometimes detected and ambushed themselves.
Small villages could be attacked by raiding parties numbering 10 or 20 warriors. However, Iñupiaq sometimes attacked larger villages, and this required much larger raiding parties. It was more difficult to feed a large war party during travel, and larger villages were harder to approach undetected, but nonetheless, raids on large villages did occur.
Burch gives detailed accounts of several large raids. For example, raiding party of 350−400 men attacked a village of about 600 people. The attackers wore camouflaged clothing and came bare593 footed to minimize the chance their approach would be heard. However, they were spotted, and the
Point Hope villagers poured out and attacked the raiders who retreated onto a field studded with
caribou spikes rendering many of them helpless. Their comrades fled leaving the injured to be killed by the defenders.
Sometimes the Iñupiaq engaged in large open battles. This could occur when a large raiding party was detected, but sometimes they took place when the animosity between two nations had reached a boiling point.
In open battles, the two sides formed battle lines with the best archers on the flanks. Then the two sides would exchange archery fire, sometimes for hours. If one side was getting the worst of it, they might sometimes flee, experiencing serious casualties. Sometimes the two sides would close and engage in hand to hand combat armed with lances and knives.
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