Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Paleolithic public goods games: why human culture and cooperation did not evolve in one step

  • Published:
Biology & Philosophy Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

It is widely agreed that humans have specific abilities for cooperation and culture that evolved since their split with their last common ancestor with chimpanzees. Many uncertainties remain, however, about the exact moment in the human lineage when these abilities evolved. This article argues that cooperation and culture did not evolve in one step in the human lineage and that the capacity to stick to long-term and risky cooperative arrangements evolved before properly modern culture. I present evidence that Homo heidelbergensis became increasingly able to secure contributions form others in two demanding Paleolithic public good games (PPGGs): cooperative feeding and cooperative breeding. I argue that the temptation to defect is high in these PPGGs and that the evolution of human cooperation in Homo heidelberngensis is best explained by the emergence of modern-like abilities for inhibitory control and goal maintenance. These executive functions are localized in the prefrontal cortex and allow humans to stick to social norms in the face of competing motivations. This scenario is consistent with data on brain evolution that indicate that the largest growth of the prefrontal cortex in human evolution occurred in Homo heidelbergensis and was followed by relative stasis in this part of the brain. One implication of this argument is that subsequent behavioral innovations, including the evolution of symbolism, art, and properly cumulative culture in modern Homo sapiens, are unlikely to be related to a reorganization of the prefrontal cortex, despite frequent claims to the contrary in the literature on the evolution of human culture and cognition.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Abraham A, Werning M et al (2008) Minds, persons, and space: an fMRI investigation into the relational complexity of higher-order intentionality. Conscious Cogn 17:438–450

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aichhorn M, Perner J et al (2006) Do visual perspective tasks need theory of mind? NeuroImage 30:1059–1068

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aiello LC, Wells JCK (2002) Energetics and the evolution of the genus Homo. Ann Rev Anthropol 31:323–338

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alvard M (2003) The adaptive nature of culture. Evol Anthropol 12:136–149

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Amati D, Shallice T (2007) On the emergence of modern humans. Cognition 103:358–385

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ardila A (2008) On the evolutionary origins of executive functions. Brain Cogn 68(1):92–99

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Arsuaga J-L, Lorenzo C et al (1999) A complete human pelvis from the middle pleistocene of Spain. Nature 399:255–258

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bookstein FL, Schafer K et al (1999) Comparing frontal cranial profiles in archaic and modern Homo by morphometric analysis. Anat Rec (New Anatomist) 257:217–224

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Boysen ST, Berntson GG (1995) Responses to quantity: perceptual versus cognitive mechanisms in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process 21:82–86

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bruner EMG et al (2003) Encephalization and allometric trajectories in the genus Homo: evidence from the Neandertal and modern lineages. Proceedings of the National Acadademy of Science 100:15335–15340

    Google Scholar 

  • Bruner E (2004) Geometric morphometrics and paleoneurology: brain shape evolution in the genus Homo. J Hum Evol 47:279–303

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bruner E (2007) Cranial shape and size variation in human evolution: structural and functional perspectives. Child’s Nerv Syst 23:1357–1365

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Call J, Agnetta B et al (2000) Social cues that chimpanzees do and do not use to find hidden objects. Animal Cognition 3:23–34

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Call J, Hare BH et al (2004) ‘Unwilling’ versus ‘unable’: chimpanzees’ understanding of human intentional action? Develop Sci 7:488–498

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Carlson SM, Davis AC et al (2005) Less is more: executive function and symbolic representation in preschool children. Psychol Sci 16:609–616

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cela-Conde CJ, Marty G, et al (2004) Activation of the prefrontal cortex in the human visual aesthetic perception. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, 101(16):6321–6325

    Google Scholar 

  • Chapais B (2008) Primeval kinship: how pair-bonding gave birth to human society. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Cheney DL, Seyfarth RM (2007) Baboon metaphysics: the evolution of a social mind. University of Chicago Press, Chicago

    Google Scholar 

  • Coolidge FL, Wynn T (2001) Executive functions of the frontal lobes and the evolutionary ascendancy of Homo sapiens. Camb Archaeol J 11:255–260

    Google Scholar 

  • de Waal FBM (2006) Primates and philosophers: how morality evolved. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ

    Google Scholar 

  • Deacon TW (1997) The symbolic species: the co-evolution of language and the brain. W.W. Norton, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Dean C, Leakey MG, Reid D, Schrenk F, Schwartz GT, Stringer C, Walker A (2001) Growth processes in teeth distinguish modern humans from Homo erectus and earlier hominins. Nature 414:628–631

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Decety J, Lamm C (2007) The role of the right temporoparietal junction in social interaction: how low-level computational processes contribute to meta-cognition. Neuroscientist 13:580–593

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dennell R (1997) The world’s oldest spears. Nature 385:767–768

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Domínguez-Rodrigo M (2002) Hunting and scavenging by early humans: the state of the debate. J World Prehist 16:1–54

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Domínguez-Rodrigo M, Pickering TR (2003) Early hominid hunting and scavenging: a zooarchaeological review. Evol Anthropol 12:275–282

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dubreuil B (2008) What do modern behaviors in Homo sapiens mean for the evolution of language? The evolution of language. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference (Evolang 7), Barcelona, World Scientific

  • Fehr E, Camerer CF (2007) Social neuroeconomics: the neural circuitry of social preferences. Trends Cogn Sci 11(10):419–427

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gärdenfors P, Osvath M (2009) Prospection as a cognitive precursor to symbolic communication. In: Larson R, Deprez V, Yamakido H (eds) Evolution of language: biolinguistic approaches. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Gilby IC (2006) Meat sharing among the Gombe chimpanzees: harassment and reciprocal exchange. Anim Behav 71:953–963

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gintis H, Bowles S et al (2005) Moral sentiments and material interests. The foundations of cooperation in economic life. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA

    Google Scholar 

  • Goren-Inbar N, Alperson N et al (2004) Evidence of hominin control of fire at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel. Science 304:725–727

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guatelli-Steinberg D (2009) Recent studies of dental development in neandertals: implications for neandertal life histories. Evol Anthropol 18:9–20

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guipert G, Mafart B (2005) Evolution de l’os frontal d’Homo heidelbergensis et Homo neanderthalensis et comparaison avec l’homme moderne. Anthropologie 43(2–3):159–167

    Google Scholar 

  • Gurven M (2004) To give or to give not: an evolutionary ecology of human food transfers. Behav Brain Sci 27:543–583

    Google Scholar 

  • Gurven M, Hill K (2009) Why do men hunt? A re-evaluation of “man the hunter” and the sexual division of labor. Curr Anthropol 50(1):51–74

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hare B, Call J et al (2000) Chimpanzees know what conspecifics do and do not see. Anim Behav 59:771–785

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hare B, Call J et al (2001) Do chimpanzees know what conspecifics know and do not know? Anim Behav 61:139–151

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hare B, Call J et al (2006) Chimpanzees deceive a human competitor by hiding. Cognition 101:495–514

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hawkes K (1993) Why hunter-gatherers work: an ancient version of the problem of public goods. Curr Anthropol 34(4):341–361

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Heath J (2008) Following the rule: practical reasoning and deontic constraint. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Henrich N, Henrich JP (2007) Why humans cooperate: a cultural and evolutionary explanation. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Henrich J, McElreath R (2003) The evolution of cultural evolution. Evol Anthropol 12(3):123–135

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Henrich J, Boyd R et al (2004) Foundations of human sociality: economic experiments and ethnographic evidence from fifteen small-scale societies. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Henshilwood CS, Dubreuil B (2009) Reading the artifacts: gleaning language skills from the middle stone age in southern Africa. In: Botha R, Knight C (eds) The cradle of language, volume 2: African perspectives. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 41–61

    Google Scholar 

  • James S (1989) Hominid use of fire in the lower and middle pleistocene: a review of the evidence. Curr Anthropol 30:1–26

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kaminski J, Call J et al (2008) Chimpanzees know what others know but not what they believe. Cognition 109(2):224–234

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan H, Gurven M (2005) The natural history of human food sharing and cooperation: a review and a new multi-individual approach to the negotiation of norms. In: Gintis H, Bowles S, Boyd R, Fehr E (eds) Moral sentiments and material interests: the foundations of cooperation in economic life. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp 75–113

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan HS, Robson AJ (2002) The emergence of humans: the coevolution of intelligence and longevity with intergenerational transfers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 99(15):10221–10226

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaplan HS, Hill KR et al (2000) A theory of human life history evolution: diet, intelligence, and longevity. Evol Anthropol 9:156–185

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Knoch D, Pascual-Leone A et al (2006) Diminishing reciprocal fairness by disrupting the right prefrontal cortex. Science 314(5800):829–832

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Krueger F, Barbey AK et al (2009) The medial prefrontal cortex mediates social event knowledge. Trends Cogn Sci 13(3):103–109

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Leonard WR (2002) Food for thought: dietary change was a driving force in human evolution. Sci Am 287(6):106–115

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lieberman DE (2008) Speculations about the selective basis for modern human craniofacial form. Evol Anthropol 17(1):55–68

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lieberman DE, McBratney BM, et al. (2002) The evolution and development of cranial form in Homo sapiens. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 99:1134–1139

    Google Scholar 

  • Macchiarelli R, Bondioli L et al (2006) How Neanderthal molar teeth grew. Nature 444:748–751

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McHenry HM, Coffing K (2000) Australopithecus to Homo: transformations in body and mind. Ann Rev Anthropol 29:125–146

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mellars P, Boyle K et al (2007) Rethinking the human revolution: new behavioural and biological and perspectives on the origins and dispersal of modern humans. MacDonald Institute of Archaeology, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Mitchell JP (2007) Activity in right temporo-parietal junction is not selective for theory-of-mind. Cereb Cortex 18:262–271

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mithen S (1996) The prehistory of the mind. Thames & Hudson, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Noack RA (2006) The frontal feedback model of the evolution of the human mind: part 1, the “pre”-human brain and the perception–action cycle. J Mind Behav 27(3–4):215–242

    Google Scholar 

  • Noack RA (2007) The frontal feedback model of the evolution of the human mind: part 2, the human brain and the frontal feedback system. J Mind Behav 28(3–4):233–264

    Google Scholar 

  • Noble W, Davidson I (1996) Human evolution, Language and Mind. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Plummer TW (2005) Discord after discard. Reconstructing aspects of oldowan hominin behavior. In: Stahl A (ed) African archaeology. A critical introduction. Blackwell Guides to Archaeology, Oxford, pp 55–92

    Google Scholar 

  • Ponce de Leon MS, Golovanova L, et al (2008) Neanderthal brain size at birth provides insights into the evolution of human life history. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(37):13764–13768

    Google Scholar 

  • Ramirez Rozzi F, Bermudez de Castro J-M (2004) Surprisingly rapid growth in Neanderthals. Nature 428:936–939

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Richards MP, Pettitt PB, et al (2000) Neanderthal diet at Vindija and Neanderthal predation: the evidence from stable isotopes. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97:7663–7666

    Google Scholar 

  • Richerson PJ, Boyd R (2005) Not by genes alone. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL

    Google Scholar 

  • Rightmire GP (2004) Brain size and encephalization in early to mid-pleistocene homo. Am J Phys Anthropol 124:109–123

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rilling JK (2006) Human and nonhuman primate brains: are they allometrically scaled versions of the same design? Evol Anthropol 15:65–77

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Robson SL, Wood B (2008) Hominin life history: reconstruction and evolution. J Anat 212:394–425

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosenberg KR, Trevathan W (1996) Bipedalism and human birth: the obstetrical dilemma revisited. Evol Anthropol 4:161–168

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosenberg KR, Trevathan WR (2001) The evolution of human birth. Sci Am 285:60–65

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sanfey AG, Rilling JK et al (2003) The neural basis of economic decisionmaking in the Ultimatum game. Science 300:1755–1758

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Saxe R, Kanwisher N (2003) People thinking about thinking people: the role of the temporoparietal junction in theory of mind. NeuroImage 19:1835–1842

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Saxe R, Powell LJ (2006) It’s the thought that counts: specific brain regions for one component of theory of mind. Psychol Sci 17:692–699

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schoenemann PT (2006) Evolution of the size and functional areas of the human brain. Ann Rev Anthropol 35:379–406

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schoenemann PT, Sheehan MJ et al (2005) Prefrontal white matter volume is disproportionately larger in humans than in other primates. Nat Neurosci 8:242–252

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Scholz J, Triantafyllou C et al (2009) Distinct regions of right temporo-parietal junction are selective for theory of mind and exogenous attention. PLoS ONE 4(3):e4869

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Semendeferi K, Armstrong E et al (2001) Prefrontal cortex in humans and apes: a comparative study of area 10. Am J Phys Anthropol 114:224–241

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Semendeferi K, Lu A et al (2002) Humans and great apes share a large frontal cortex. Nat Neurosci 5(3):272–276

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Simpson SW, Quade J et al (2008) A female Homo erectus Pelvis from gona, Ethiopia. Science 322(5904):1089–1092

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spreng RN, Mar RA et al (2009) The common neural basis of autobiographical memory, prospection, navigation, theory of mind, and the default mode: a quantitative meta-analysis. J Cogn Neurosci 21(3):489–510

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thieme H (1997) Lower paleolithic hunting spears. Nature 385:807–810

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello M (2007) If they’re so good at grammar, then why don’t they talk? Hints from apes’ and humans’ use of gestures. Lang Learn Dev 3(2):133–156

    Google Scholar 

  • Tomasello M, Carpenter M et al (2005) Understanding and sharing intentions: the origins of cultural cognition. Behav Brain Scie 28:675–735

    Google Scholar 

  • Uher J, Call J (2008) How the great apes (Pan troglodytes, Pongo pygmaeus, Pan paniscus, Gorilla gorilla) perform on the reversed reward contingency task II: transfer to new quantities, long-term retention, and the impact of quantity ratios. J Comp Psychol 122(2):204–212

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ungar PS, Grine FE et al (2006) Diet in early homo: a review of the evidence and a new model of adaptive versatility. Ann Rev Anthropol 35:209–228

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ungerleider LG, Courtney SM, et al. (1998) A neural system for human visual working memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 95:883–890

  • van ‘t Wout M, Kahn RS et al (2006) Affective state and decision-making in the ultimatum game. Exp Brain Res 169(4):564–568

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vlamings PHJM, Uher J et al (2006) How the great apes (Pan troglodytes, Pongo pygmaeus, Pan paniscus, and Gorilla gorilla) perform on the reversed contingency task: the effects of food quantity and food visibility. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process 32(1):60–70

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Warneken F, Hare B et al (2007) Spontaneous altruism by chimpanzees and young children. PLoS Biol 5(7):1414–1420

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Weaver TD, Hublin J-J (2009) Neandertal birth canal shape and the evolution of human childbirth. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, 106:8151–8156

    Google Scholar 

  • Wood JN, Hauser MD (2008) Action comprehension in non-human primates: motor simulation or inferential reasoning? Trends Cogn Sci 12(12):461–465

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wrangham R, Conklin-Brittain N (2003) Cooking as a biological trait. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology—Part A: Molecular & Integrative Physiology 136(1):35–46

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I thank one anonymous referee for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper, as well as Chad Horne for comments and editorial support. This work was supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy Department, Université du Québec à Montréal, Case postale 8888, Succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, QC, H3C 3P8, Canada

    Benoît Dubreuil

Authors
  1. Benoît Dubreuil
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Benoît Dubreuil.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Dubreuil, B. Paleolithic public goods games: why human culture and cooperation did not evolve in one step. Biol Philos 25, 53–73 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-009-9177-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-009-9177-7

Keywords

Search

Navigation