Journal
BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY AND SOCIOBIOLOGY
Volume 56, Issue 4, Pages 366-380Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00265-004-0793-6
Keywords
hunter-gatherers; food sharing; cooperation; reciprocal altruism
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The common occurrence of food transfers within human hunter-gatherer and forager-horticulturalist groups presents exciting test cases for evolutionary models of altruism. While kin biases in sharing are consistent with nepotism based on kin selection, there is much debate over the extent to which reciprocal altruism and tolerated scrounging provide useful explanations of observed behavior. This paper presents a model of optimal sharing breadth and depth, based on a general non-tit-for-tat form of risk-reduction based reciprocal altruism, and tests a series of predictions using data from Hiwi and Ache foragers. I show that large, high variance food items are shared more widely than small, easily acquired food items. Giving is conditional upon receiving in pairwise interactions and this correlation is usually stronger when the exchange of value rather than quantities is considered. Larger families and low producing families receive more and give less, consistent with the notion that marginal value may be a more salient currency than quantity.
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