by Hugh M. Lewis

The model of eco-culture is proposed as the basic mechanism of human adaptation to a natural environment driving human evolution and cultural development in history. This arose within an evolutionary framework and promoted human survival and reproductive success. In the elaboration of this model, I have adopted a complex, multifactorial approach that triangulates the emergence of an adaptive cultural system clearly between environmental, social and symbolic-cognitive variables that permitted flexibility and plasticity of human adaptive response. I have striven to fit this model into an eco-evolutionary framework. In general, I find the ecological variables and principles used to describe other animal populations to be generally applicable to the description of human populations as well. On the other hand, cultural modes of adaptation have also permitted a new level of cultural selection that has metabiotically influenced the environment in a counteradaptive and co-evolutionary manner.

Searching for the eco-evolutionary foundations of human systems as the basis for interpreting archaeological systems entails the elaboration of a characteristically human mode of culturally mediated adaptation to an environment. The human relationship to its natural environment can be said to be metabiotic in a sense that there are counteradaptational trends occurring at multiple levels. To a great extent, the brain as an organ of refined awareness and planning became a remarkable counteradaptational trait-complex that facilitated wide-ranging adaptation and tremendous cultural plasticity. At all times during our evolution, our ancestors have had to cope with and somehow overcome the variables and extremes presented by the environment. The ecological adaptation of human populations and the cultural processes mediating this pattern of adaptation, became the functional foundation for human survival and success in the world. Domestication of many species of plants and animals, and the subsequent breeding of different breeds of these plants and animals, has been a deliberate example of the cultural selection and mediation of the metabiotic framework of human systems.

In a very similar way, cultural patterning has also mediated the adaptation and patterning of the human to the natural environment, and has entailed that humans have the general plasticity to adapt to an almost infinite range of cultural patterns and processes. Because these processes are so basic to our nature, it enables the enculturated or implanted forms to assume a compelling force that is almost instinctive or impulsive in character, and that appears to be very "naturalized." The capacity of human adaptive flexibility seems to be primarily and mostly a phenotypic response to a generalized genotypic trait complex. We can say that instinctual patterns have been checked, and to some extent probably sublimated and modified, for the purpose of the post-natal acquisition of cultural trait patterns. Within this complex cultural framework, humans must seek many of the same kinds of adaptive strategies and patterns of subsistence that characterize other animal groups. In particular, I believe, humans have developed intraspecific patterns of social competition, symbolically mediated, that functions at both the individual and the group levels. These patterns are remarkably parallel to patterns of instinct-driven interspecific competition among many kinds of animals, except that among humans these patterns are independent of instinct and instead appear to be symbolic-driven or symbolically-culturally dependent upon "artifactual" modes of expression. Especially, I believe, the intraspecific capacity for human aggression and violence is remarkable and possibly unique to human beings. I accept the hypothesis that it is the unchaining of humankind from the closed-world of instinctual determination of behavior had the consequence of rendering aggression and possibly violent behavior without innate controls, and thus being susceptible and quite malleable to cultural shaping and sublimation. I do not believe that aggression and violence are the only possible forms of motivational force that humans possess.

The "artifactual" modes of expression of symbolic mediation of human adaptive behavior is the potential archaeological hook onto this problem of reality, and it stems from the possibility of being able to correctly and accurately interpret the material evidence found at numerous and various sites in terms of the possible patterns of behavior and significant cultural mediational factors and motivations that might account for the non-random or isotrope distributions of assemblages at significant archaeological sites. If most skeletal remains are found with associated burial items or with a relatively intact sub-cranial skeleton, but a site is found in which only skulls appear that are broken open at the magnum, this suggests that some other kind of ritual or survival performance was occurring than a burial or even a roof collapse of a cave. It suggests some form of violence involving decapitation and possibly cannibalism. This type of behavior would not necessarily fall outside of the expected normal range of variation of human behavior patterning, and though it may be controversial because it offends modern tastes and sensibilities, the bulk of the ethnographic and archaeological evidence lends credence to an hypothesis of some form of cannibalism occurring. When cannibalism becomes related to either patterns of warfare or alternatively, survival under conditions of famine, then the case for interpreting the evidence in this manner becomes even more powerful.

I believe that in this kind of example, the archaeological evidence and conceptual systems should remain fundamentally neutral and objective in interpreting the evidence. Cannibalism would not be an unrealistic nor an unlikely possibility, though it appears today to be a form of protein-consumption almost universally taboo, it has been documented from first hand evidence and it has been demonstrated to occur at low frequency in modern populations under certain specific sets of conditions. This type of example is an important case for demonstrating how archaeological evidence can be made to bend to modern biases without an objective sense of asking hard questions of the evidence being given its full weight. This is not the only kind of example in which this form of distortion appears to occur.

It must be understood that the basic patterning of culture as this developed in its first phases was toward a generalizing, non-specializing pattern that permitted human groups a great capacity for niche expansion and adaptive radiation across a broad range of habitats and environments. This range became greater and greater as cultural processes and adaptations came to increasingly mediate the relationship between humans and their environment and between humans and one another. It ultimately allowed humans near global access, but global access was probably not completely achieved until the last 30,000 years. It is remarkable though that very wide ranging adaptation was achieved by Homo erectus as early as 2 million BP, and it is possible that a partial range of this adaptation may have included winter and subarctic type adaptations to conditions of severe cold as well as the evident capacity to navigate significant water barriers. Between Homo erectus and the rise of modern Homo sapiens, we have a long run way of aggregative cultural development in which cultural adaptation was based upon mostly crude stone technology, incorporating fire, some form of makeshift and permanent sheltering, and probably the processing of hides for clothes. Some form of primitive human language was undeniably an intrinsic part of this early cultural complex, which would have involved gesture-gesticulation as much as aural-oral expression, and it would also have probably entailed a kind of language system that was grammatically reduced to bare essentials and that was largely context dependent in its expression. Somewhere at the end of this long run-way, when the cultural airplane started to lift-off the ground, we see evidence, within the last 100,000 years, of human burials complete with aesthetic and symbolic (ritual religious) forms, suggesting some belief system associated with animism and spirit-worlds.

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All archaeological systems theory can be found to involve and operate on three basic levels of human functional adaptation. The first level involves the environmental relationships that a society must maintain in order for it to achieve survival and growth, being fundamentally dependent upon the intake of other animals and plants for energy and essential amino acid. The second level deals with the social interactions between individuals, and the third level deals with the necessary and unavoidable problem of the symbolic or psychological organization of reality. At the same time, levels and units of analysis must take into account both the situation of the individual member of a group, as a quasi-independent player, and the superorganic situation of the culture and social group as a whole, as possibly a corporate social entity. Thus every archaeological system we can think of or encounter in the field, should demonstrate significant evidence of this kind of system, variable in its manifestations and differentiation into almost an endless variety of form and content. The purpose of any cultural system, at whatever level upon which it is analyzed, is to permit and promote the adaptive functioning and equilibrium of the individual and of the group of which the individual is a part. This purpose follows the fundamental biological imperatives of people as an animal species--reproductive success and survival under all conditions. The cultural imperatives of the group tend to follow these same biological imperatives, only transferred to the group level in a corporate sense. Furthermore, the cultural imperative tends to follow another set of secondary objectives, which are typically, uniquely and universally human: 1. The achievement of maximal cultural integration of a group. 2. The achievement of an adaptive equilibrium based upon the continuity and survival of the group, even at the expense of its individual constituency.

If we push our eco-cultural model of anthropogenesis back to the very beginning, possibly even before the time of Lucy, we will find the rudimentary basis for all these factors in operation. We will find in other words, a critical interplay between environmental-ecological variables, social patterning and presymbolic forms articulating between the individual and the group, and driving human evolution in a direction that made cultural selection an increasingly important direction of human survival and reproductive success. I would argue that the basic model was there from the very beginning, and took its original shape in an adaptive regime totally unlike anything that followed or what we know today, conditioned as we are through cultural blinders.

The following kind of model of eco-culture is therefore proposed as a general template for understanding all human cultural patterning in situ. We can take any cultural system that we encounter and analyze this system in terms of its three main components:

Usually, this tripartite structure is represented archaeologically in terms of a functional pyramid, with the ecological and material substrate at the base, the social and organizational intermediate structure, and the symbolic-ideological superstructure. The implication of such a functional pyramid is that the relations between the base and apex of the pyramid are determinative, and material-ecological relationships therefore can be said to have causal priority over social organizational structures and ideological systems.

In showing this alternate representation of a similar system, I put each of the three main components of an eco-cultural model at the vertices of an equilateral triangle, and demonstrate the inter-determinative nature of the relationships occurring between the different systems. By doing so I wish to demonstrate that I believe there is no necessary causal priority, no hen and egg order, within such a model. Secondly, I wish to demonstrate that the system must have emerged eventually as a full blown system by which human groups achieved adaptive success in a broad range of natural environments. This system automatically incorporates both the individual and the group level, the individual being represented and correlated with the symbolic organization of experience, and the group equated with the social organization of human behavior and belief. There is therefore no basis in this model to place conceptual priority over the individual or the group, or to stress exclusively either at the expense of the other. The spheres of relationships that these three sets of dimensions of the eco-cultural model encompass also overlap in the middle, so it is evident that it is impossible to draw a strict line of demarcation between where one kind of influence might leave off and another take over.

The model has three main operating components or subsystems that operate as interharmonic periodic oscillator mechanisms in relation to one another, and hence serve as constraints to the state-path trajectory of the system as a whole. The three components are:

1. Individual human adaptation and adjustment, entailing meeting basic biological needs as well as cultural defined appetites, and includes invariably symbolic aspects of the human organization of behavior and knowledge.

2. Social organization, relation and process, which includes both intragroup relations and between group relations. In a biological sense we define the primary group as the family, but this is largely culturally defined and varies considerably in terms of kinship and social definitions of roles and social identities. Thus mating patterns and patterns of social exchange for reproductive purposes becomes important to consider, and these are commonly a point of substantial cross-cultural variation of pattern. The secondary group would be defined as the total framework of extended social relations beyond the level of the family group that serves to integrate members of the family, and the family as a whole unit, into some larger field and system of social relationships. If family patterns were variable cross-culturally, it appears that secondary group formations, often regulated by indirect constraint and sanctioning involving ritual behavior and stereotypical belief systems, have been even more variable and non-constant. We may risk a generalization in this regard: the greater the distance of social relationship from ego, the greater the inherent insecurity and "entropy" that is attached to that relationship. It can be seen that the rise of state-formations or of secondary social group formations that had a strong sense of corporate institutionalization depended immensely upon the capacity to stabilize and render less insecure familial social formations at the primary level. This entailed inducing some degree of exogamy/endogamy restrictions, enforcement of rules of monogamy or restrictive polygamy, formalization of marriage rituals, rules of locality and inheritance, as well as defining in an explicit sense the roles and behavior appropriate to different categories of persons upon a primary level. On another level of development, it would have entailed the stratification of social primary social groups into intermediate social formations, often hierarchically organized in relation to status and resource availability.

3. Environmental relationships, which includes meeting biological needs for individuals and the environmental impact of human social organization and population. In a non-restrictive sense environmental relationships, which in saturated systems involves circumscription locally or regionally of resources and ecological constraints or limiting factors, would also come to entail factors of intraspecific competition and social circumscription of the environment as well.

In the explication of this model, it is evident that all three sets of factors must be taken into account in a coordinated manner simultaneously. We cannot exclusively emphasize one or only two sets of factors, either social, environmental or symbolic, to the exclusion of the other sets of factors at the same time.

The contention of this basic model is that it is fundamental to all human systems, and if we wish to understand the structural patterning of any group or arrangement of people in the world, or alternatively, of the assemblage distribution of their archaeological remains, then it is important to at least attempt to take into account all three sets of factors and their interrelationships at the same time.

It is evident in such a model that causal priority can be given to any one of the three sets of factors, or to some intermediate combination of the three. It is also evident that such a model inherently invites multi-dimensional analysis and reinterpretation of the same body of evidence from different angles of understanding. We can seek to explore the ecological and environmental relationships implied by a particular assemblage pattern and its composition. At the same time, we can also ask questions regarding its possible social implications and its symbolic implications. We may ask, for instance, from a symbolic standpoint, what kind of knowledge was necessary in order to produce and use the things represented in the assemblage. What does the distributive pattern of the assemblage tell us about the kinds of activities that might have resulted in such a distribution, as opposed to some other possible distribution. If such activities could be inferred, then what again would be the functional knowledge implied by such activities. What would the actors need to know and how would they have been thinking about what they were doing. Furthermore, from a symbolic standpoint, if we can get at the knowledge base implicit to an assemblage and its composite artifacts, we can go one step further and consider the kind of symbolic organization of experience that might be suggested by the implicit knowledge base.

The approach to any archaeological or anthropological problem, in terms of elaborating a sufficient eco-cultural theory of a system, can systematically query such a model in terms of its total dimensionally and in terms of the direction of determination the possible relationships may entail. We can see thus to fill in the blanks of a kind of grid:

By use of the term "symbolic" in this work, I do not wish to suggest the looser and more general use of the term implying mostly affective and metaphorical associations of meaning around some symbol. By symbolic I refer to a specific order and structural patterning of human cognition, perception and behavioral response, organized in a specific manner and always exhibiting some form of external or extra-somatic, material manifestation. Symbolic forms always also have some social communicative and integrative function. The social aspects of symbolism, like the social aspects of language, which is the principle human medium for symbolic process, cannot be ignored in light of the psychological aspects only. In this sense, as with all biological life forms, we can say that there is no individual human being who can exist outside of the framework of a social group or a population. Individuals can be isolated from social life, but they remain in a fundamental sense constructed by their social identity.

It is also the case that we cannot ever clearly isolate one set of factors from the others. They come all wrapped up as a package so to speak, and this package is what we refer to as cultural patterning. Enough variables pertain in each of the areas and relational dimensions as to end up with an infinite number of possible patterns, and hence no two cultural patterns end up being alike.

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Anthropogenesis concerns the explanation for the rise and primary function of human cultural patterning. Without a doubt, human cultural patterning arose as an adaptive complex of traits that facilitated human survival and reproductive success, and this adaptive complex was probably from the start capable of spanning a number of alternative niches and ranges of territory. It is important, if we are to get at archaeological systems theory, to push the conceptual modeling process back to the earliest possible point in the record. Any baseline short of an anthropogenesis model would presuppose the existence of one or more advanced cultural or human traits, that in turn must be accounted for.

Many models of anthropogenesis have been put forward over the years, and I believe it is a favorite past-time of boneologists to speculate about the original causes of cultural patterning when they are not engaged actually in the detailed analysis of their specimens. Such models are really just-so stories, and I doubt we will ever gather enough evidence from the ground from the earliest phases of hominid evolution to figure it all out. I must begin with a model of anthropogenesis within which to frame basic models of archaeological systems, because these provide the only analytic baseline that we can have for setting the direction and explanation of all that came after.

Developing a cogent and realistic model of anthropogenesis therefore provides an analytical and synthetic baseline by which to frame the basic problems of anthropological inquiry, the rise of human cultural systems in adaptation to a natural environment. In general, we may say that original proto-cultural adaptations of hominids offered a rather narrow and relatively invariable base-line for human cultural development and adaptation, but the earliest precursors were sufficient enough to permit relatively broad niche expansion/generalization that crossed multiple trophic levels. Positive natural selection for cultural trait complexes entailed as well selection for cultural differentiation and variation that served to increase the basic cultural platform from a very early point in time.

The only constraints that I place upon the development of such a model of anthropogenesis are that it must conform to certain known or understandable principles of ecology and evolutionary theory, or what I refer to as an eco-evolutionary framework. At the same time, it is also important that it is coordinate to and not contradictory with the information that is known about human adaptation and the hominid fossil record.

In regard to the first point, I will assert that human cultural adaptation arose within an evolutionary context that favored positive selection toward a specific trait complex which comprised a suite of polymorphic traits that are used to uniquely characterize Homo sapiens today, and that we can find evident in other fossil specimens of the hominid line.

This model is based upon certain presuppositions:

1. There has been an unbroken line of biological continuity between our first protohominid ancestors and modern human beings. This line may not have been a straight line, but it appears to have originated in central Eastern Africa and periodically extended out throughout the Old World and eventually into the New World over the past 100,000 years. This line, by best fit approximation by the fossil record, appears to have been from Australopithecus afarensus to Australopithecus africanus to Homo habilis to Homo erectus to Archaic Homo sapiens (including Homo neanderthalensus) to Homo sapiens sapiens. Whatever the exact sequence and succession taken, these appear to be clearly allopatric species with some periods of sympatric differentiation (robust lines specialized towards lower trophic levels appear to have failed, perhaps in interspecific competition (bears and cats) and intraspecific competition (gracile versus robust forms). Regardless, effective stone tool technologies appear to have developed early, at least by Homo habilus, and more likely with earlier forms of Australophithecus. Once achieved, stone technology became the basis for further cultural development which depends upon environmental mediation, sharing and transmission of cultural traits both horizontally and vertically.

Mitochondrial RNA models suggest period out-migrations from Africa, possibly on a regular basis, perhaps as frequently as every 100,000 or so years, or even more frequently, and suggest that some of these may have led to partial replacement of previous inhabitants of areas by new populations and groups.

2. Cultural trait complexes arose as an adaptative response to the natural world, and permitted positive selection of those populations who exhibited these trait complexes. Cultural trait patterns would not have arisen and cannot be originally explained except in an evolutionary context. Biological systems permit no trait complexes to evolve that do not have some form of adaptive-reproductive efficacy and advantage. Once a fundamental cultural trait complex developed that can be defined as uniquely anthropological, cultural patterning became an unbroken feature of human evolutionary development until today.

3. There occurred a fundamental form of systems feedback (defined by my eco-cultural model) between human evolutionary development and cultural selective mechanisms that resulted in the progressive development of the key anthropological trait complex in human beings (larger brains, language, manual dexterity, prolonged infant dependency, human sexuality and aggression) which in turn promoted more rapid cultural development.

4. Cultural trait patterning permitted greater flexibility and adaptability to human populations, through evolved individual phenotypic trait plasticity, that permitted human populations to overcome a larger range of environmental variation and fluctuation. The original trait adaptations were no longer contextually dependent upon the original environmental-selective contexts in which they originally arose.

5. Early cultural successes of hominid populations led to a pattern of saturation-oversaturation of human systems upon the ecological and environmental frameworks in which these systems operated. Early success would have permitted, in other words, rapid population growth that would have saturated all available ecological habitats/niches, and would have resulted in pressures towards niche expansion and adaptive radiation. People came to saturate their systems, at the levels upon which they were trophically-culturally adaptive. We may properly speak of cultural-trophic systems of adaptation. All human systems, at whatever their cultural-trophic levels, tended to maximize and saturate their available resource systems, and therefore tended to exist at levels of elevated K.

5. Such early success would have created secondary social evolutionary contexts in which cultural selection factors played a more important role than natural selection factors. This came to be expressed in increasing levels of intersocial competition and transculturation processes that favored greater cultural selection.

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It is at the same time important to look at basic processes of human evolution and cultural development in terms of the negative selection regimes that probably had the greatest constraining and shaping effects upon human populations. I will rank in order of decreasing importance those factors of negative selection that most greatly resulted in human mortalities:

1. Diseases due to bacterial borne or viral infection, malnutrition and food poisoning, as well as a variety of untreated medical conditions leading to death.

2. Human conflict and violence.

3. Natural disasters & calamities such as drought and starvation; exposure to the elements.

4. Predation by other species.

It may well have been that early in hominid evolution predation by large carnivores was a considerable risk in the natural environment. Once hominids achieved the technological skill levels necessary, they for the most part systematically eliminated this kind of threat as a major selective factor. Of the factors above, sets 1 and 2 can be lumped together as part of relatively density independent environmental factors--the selective pressure from these kinds of elements would tend, it seems to affect entire populations across the board. Factors 2 and 4 are issues that relate specifically to density dependent factors of intraspecific and interspecific competition. It is clear that humans, as predators themselves, would have systematically eliminated through competitive exclusion any other predators at the top of the trophic pyramid.

Throughout human history and prehistory, by far microphages and microbes have been the leading and most significant factor of death of human beings, and therefore has been the leading constraint and agency in the controlling of human populations. It strikes me that human conflict and violence has taken a considerable toll through human prehistory and history. Evidence of the historical record alone confirms this indictment on humanity.

Diseases have not really been treated as a significant factor of human evolution or of our cultural strategies of human development, even though it has long been recognized that they have played a dramatic role in human population dynamics in human history. And yet the importance of disease must have transcended cultural and historical contexts, and must have had evolutionary implications as well. In a direct sense, it cannot be said that the rise of human brains and an anthropomorphic trait complex had any causal connection to disease patterning and adaptation. It appears for the most part that cultural development and human evolution has continued and proceeded in spite of widespread disease selection and not because of it. But there is a sense that certain populations have developed through time genetic resistance to some kinds of diseases, such as cycle cell anemia in central Africa that increases tolerance for malaria infection. I do believe that cultural systems developed though at a fairly early time certain kinds of patterns that can be characterized as preventive and infective cultural responses to prevalent and frequent diseases, especially those relating to malnutrition. Much of this became "magical" depending upon the system of rationalization for disease causation and explanation that was adopted. Some of it became medicinal in a homeopathic sense that herbal remedies were sought and found, through trial and error, in the natural environment. Some of this was spiritual and religious that involved communication and invocation of supernatural spirit forces residing in the natural world. Even so, some of it may also have taken the form of cultural proscriptions, sanctions and taboos that served to develop ecologically based solutions for dealing with the possible transmission and infection of diseases.

At this stage it is impossible to say exactly if the proclivity to human violence and aggression is genetically predetermined or if it is merely culturally conditioned. I believe that it has been an unhappy combination of both sets of factors that has lead to an increased potential of human destructiveness and capacity for violence. Civilization has made humankind no less violent, and evidence suggests just the opposite may be true, that in fact primitive "hunting and gathering" forefathers may have been inherently less violent than modern human beings have learned to be. Ethnographic evidence supports the contention that low-level or low-intensity primitive warfare was a chronic and common aspect of intersocial relations throughout the world and throughout the period of human history, at least. Again, the models we adopt to explain this aspect of human social life remains open to debate. It is not necessary that we explain every aspect of human reality, at least not right away, in order to treat those related issues that remain theoretically relevant. It is enough to acknowledge that it is generally so, though hardly without important exceptions.

Natural disasters and other calamities like long periods of drought, flooding, forest fires, etc., that affected not just human beings but the natural environments in which they dwelled, would also have been critical issues in their lives. I believe that though at times these may have claimed considerable numbers of people, these kinds of cataclysmic events would have been relatively infrequent and rare compared to lower level and more common patterns of warfare, malnutrition and infection by virulent diseases.

In understanding the role that negative selective factors played in human evolution and cultural development, it is important to consider the possible adaptive and ecological consequences that such chronic negative selection factors would have had upon human systems. One of the first and most basic responses would have been the drive for humans to reconstitute (regroup) themselves after significant natural calamity, and to almost automatically increase rates of birth following such events. Human population growth rates would thus be continuously held in high gear, possibly not only in response to such events, but in anticipation of similar events in the future. If experience taught a people that half of all children born would die before they came of age to reproduce, there would be a premium placed upon the maximization of a women's reproductive capacity during her life-time. Sexual attractiveness and human sexuality would have encouraged this tendency. Hominid females would have started their reproductive careers as early as possible, and would probably have continued these until as late as possible. Birth spacing would have been at least one year or more apart.

Another consequence of facing challenges of natural or human induced negative selection would have been a need to socially and culturally sanction and reinforce what could be considered to be naturally precarious human relationships. If long-term survival for any one human being was remote, there would have been a premium placed upon fostering cultural conditions and social contexts that would serve to maximize these long-term chances, and to reinforce relational patterns that were cultural defined as adaptive and beneficial for a group. Group identity would have been given priority over individual identity in such systems, and the social aspects of human beings would have been promoted over those idiosyncratic aspects of human nature. This is not to say that group identity would have been necessarily coercive or intolerant of a wide range of human variation of behavior, or even occasionally of atomistic social conditions. It may have demanded an extreme degree of social flexibility and periodic or chronic atomization of nuclear groups. But it would have promoted an inherent dependency of the human being upon the group and upon the cultural system that the group possessed. This dependency was reinforced from earliest infancy, and continued throughout life. At the same time, social relationships were always therefore ambivalent, risk prone and occasionally ambiguous. I will not say that altruism was a valued trait--I believe altruism, like ideologies of sacrifice and righteousness, arises in secondary cultural systems. I believe social relationships were fundamentally opportunistic from an ego-centered perspective, except that anthropological ego was inherently socio-centrically decentered in a larger field of social relations that had to be "played," manipulated and navigated to one's own best advantage.

Neither is this to claim that genuine bonds of love and care did not frequently arise among our primitive ancestors. A great deal of social life depends upon the capacity of human beings to empathize with the condition of others (social self consciousness) and to act in ways to alleviate such suffering. Such bonds may or may not have become attenuated by circumstances of chronic disease or high infant mortality or famine. Attitudes of tolerance must have accompanied in equal measure attitudes of intolerance. Some of the earliest and most poignant evidence is found in Neanderthal burial remains and in the apparent care-taking of diseased or disabled individuals that demonstrates a sense of genuine fidelity and devotion, and a strong sense of separation at death.

In developing basic models of cultural systems theory in relation to the human past, here it is only necessary to mention a few basic constraining principles.

1. Morphological tissue and trait development within an evolutionary context appears to be discretely continuous in the direction favored by positive selection. All other directions will be negatively selected.

2. Convergent evolutionary trends in functional morphology reveals consistently that traits streamline for particular modes of adaptation in particular regional contexts. Certain kinds of design configurations can be considered to be optimally efficient under certain prevailing and consistent conditions, and it is expected that species will arrive at these design configurations, as secondary derivative characteristics of their basic morphological pattern, if given enough time. Wing structure in the air is an important convergent design trend, as are fin and tail structures in the water. Vertical or horizontal tail fins distinguish sea mammals from fish, but both sets of fins accomplish very parallel and similar kinds of results in the water. We must thus ask in this regard what gets accomplished by a leg structure favoring flat rear feet, bipedality and free gangly arms. If we look at other bipedal or partially bipedal animals in nature, we find an interesting mix. Tyrannousaurs and other carnivorous predatory dinosaurs appear to have been bipedal, with the front set of arms becoming either hooks for slashing and catching prey, or, in the case of the big guys, becoming largely vestigial and useless. Wingless birds are basically bipedal, and if we look at such birds we find that the characteristic they share in common is the capacity to run and walk along the ground in an efficient manner.

3. Trait complexes can be said to co-evolve polymorphically, such that selection will tend to favor discrete variables of an entire complex, rather than point-specific kinds of traits.

4. Trait variation will covary enough at any one time in an on-going genetically breeding population such that there will always be a range of variation for any specific or discrete trait characteristic, and for entire complexes as well. Selection will tend to push trait characteristics in one direction or another, a process referred to as character displacement.

5. Character displacement represents a normal form of evolutionary oscillation and drift in heterozygous populations, and such displacement can be associated with trends called niche shift, including niche expansion or niche specialization or niche differentiation.

6. Extreme environmental fluctuations, or alternatively, high levels of interspecific or intraspecific competition or predation, or alternative environmental degradation due to oversaturation, will tend to push the genetic profile of a population in one direction or another, tending to bottleneck the population in the long run.

These kinds of evolutionary constraints favor either allopatric or sympatric speciation, as well as, in the long run, regular taxon cycles. These constraints are applicable to all eukaryotic, multi-cellular organisms, and are especially applicable to the Kingdom animalia, of which of course hominids are a part.

The focus then in understanding these operating conditions is to account for the evolution of a uniquely human trait-complex that can account in a minimal sense for the rise of basic cultural patterning. This trait complex is what is clearly evident in the early hominid fossil remains, or that are inferable from modern human or primate populations on the basis of presumed common morphology and basic behavior.

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It is worthwhile to consider the full range of positive selection factors that may have played a part in the evolutionary development and emergence of human systems. In a sense, what made human cultural evolution unique and independent of biological evolution would have been the influence of a complex suite of intervening factors that encouraged and promoted the positive selection of a unique anthropomorphic trait complex, within situ of an emerging cultural context.

In this I have recognized various possible forms of selection that may have been relevant, such as natural selection, possibly involving environmental, ecological or metabiotic selective factors; social selection factors, including possibly birth order, parentage or lineage, mate choice and reproductive selection factors, and also including possible forms of sociability and cooperative networks that enhanced an individual's, and by extension, a group's opportunities for resources and survival; and cultural selection factors, which would have included as well factors relating to symbolic cognition, culturally modified behavior, and cultural ecological adaptations including the ability to make and use a wide range of tools, and general problem solving and experiential intelligence that goes along with this.

It is not important to wax lyrical on all of these kinds of possible selection factors, except to mention that such factors would have had to have operated consistently and continuously in such a manner as to promote positive human cultural and biological development. It is my opinion that these sets of factors would have been coalesced more or less into a cultural system that came then to be defined within the framework of consanguineal kin-groups. Thus, different configurations of these factors would have worked differently for different groups in different contexts, and this would have been the basis for cultural patterning and variability that emerged between groups. In such a framework, systems of positive selection factors would have operated at a group and intergroup level and led possibly to between group competition that would in the long run advantage or favor one group over another. This would have formed the basis therefore for differential cultural evolution favoring more efficient cultural selection factors over less adequate ones.

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Models of cultural anthropogenesis are typically used to explain the reasons for the rise of humankind within an evolutionary context. Resort is typically made to any number of distinctive human traits in the search for some key prime-mover in the development of the capacity for human culture. Generally, what is ignored is the evolutionary context itself that selected for such traits, and the fact that such traits arose as a complex, as a kind of functional system, that was positively reinforcing of the complex as a whole. Culture, I would claim, was a by-product of this system, and big-brains was one of the key components that was selected for and that in turn favored increasing cultural selection.

A good part of the story is in place, for it is clear that bipedalism was one of the earliest, uniquely hominid traits to have developed. Of course, this freed our hands and arms to be used for other things than load-bearing or hanging from trees. One of the important things free arms provided was a means to carry things. I believe that it gave to humans, who are otherwise somewhat awkward in their gait, a superb capacity for walking long distances. And it makes sense that while our earliest ancestors were engaged in walking from one point to another, they may have attempted to carry things with them. Items they liked or found useful in one location could be transported to other locations and hence could continue to be used. I do not even think it was important that stones were the main thing they carried. I would suspect that they found wood and bone items easier to use and manipulate and mold. And when they walked, they potentially could have walked very long distances, setting distant landmarks on the horizon as their objective targets. Of course free hands meant they could do other things as well. It might have given them an advantage in throwing. Throwing could have been stones, or it could have been clubs or even make-shift spears. I do not think it would have taken out diminutive Australopheticus ancestors very long to figure out that a long straight stick could be thrown in the direction of its axis and have greater penetrating power. Rocks were good no doubt, especially in frightening away animals. But spears were useful if their aim was not to scare away animals but to bring them to the ground. It is common lore in the jungle that a spear, instantly produced from a small bush, is the best protection from an attacking jaguar or other large cat, and I believe our early Australophithecoid ancestors probably feared most large cats who stalked their prey in silence.

Of course, with Australopithecine, more ape-like than human, we see a creature that was still very much dictated to and determined by natural selection. Hence this genus's adaptive radiation was confined to a band about the African heartland, a crescent, that may have extended into the Middle East. It underwent some degree of sympatric evolution, always tending, it seems to specialize in the direction of herbivory and more robust forms resembling more Gorillas than Chimpanzees. The capacity to find niches based upon a vegetable rather than a mixed diet would entail feeding at a lower trophic level where there might have been less competition for resources, and at the same time yielded, over all, greater returns for the energy expended. It was a low-energy adaptation, one that always ran into an evolutionary deadend.

It was apparent therefore that early hominid species spanned several trophic levels in their diversified niche adaptations. The basic trophic-niche adaptation of the hominid line can best be described as a generalized omnivore. It was this wide niche spectrum capacity that permitted hominids the adaptive edge over other kinds of animals. It demanded a form of greater mobility, without sacrificing other aspects of anatomical design, which entailed perhaps that bipedalism was the most efficient mode of trait adaptation for this kind of broad-spectrum niche adaptation.

There does seem to be a linear progression of bigger brains from Australopithecus to Homo habilus, who shows the first signs of very rough and primitive stone tool technology featuring flakes from a core. The tools were not large or heavy, but neither was Homo habilus very large. Selection was definitely in favor of larger brains at this time, and it is clear therefore that a rudimentary eco-cultural complex was already worked out beforehand.

But before we can hope to answer the question of anthropogenesis within a conceptually adequate framework, we need first to answer the question of culture to begin with. I have used the term human cultural patterning to distinguish what I consider to be the evidence and patterned manifestations of the effects of cultural organization of behavior within an environment.

"Culture" has been used commonly in a reified sense as something that is presumed to be true, to exist as a whole, a priori to its manifestation. Culture therefore has the form of a "thing" that exists independently of any particular manifestation or human agency by which it becomes articulated. The truth is this "nationalistic" conception of culture is anthropologically naïve and unrealistic, especially in frameworks where nationalistic pretensions did not exist. Because we use a single term of German people, we may assume erroneously that all German people are culturally homogenous and alike. Nationalistic culture indeed promotes this kind of uniformity and homogeneity of principle, for instance by imposing a standard dialect of language that is functionally promoted in schools, in government and through the media.

It must be understood that our prototypical people were without nation-states or national identities by which to define themselves and chauvinistically promote their own culture. This is not to say that such early groups did not have a full-fledged sense of themselves as "people." If an empirical definition of culture is based upon the concept of sharing and reciprocity, and the achievement of a complex kind of consensus of variable patterning, then to the extent that groups of people were able to achieve such a cultural consensus among and between themselves, they might potentially have come to conceive of themselves in terms of a "whole" or a single group of people who were culturally distinct. Thus, an undeveloped tribe could be a kind of nation (or to be more politically correct, an ethno-nation) if a part of their cultural patterning determined that this kind of status attribution was an important component of their behavior and attitudes. It strikes me that such an identity would become most significant to people in contexts where they shared space, and potentially resources, with other groups of people who were perceived as different and as fundamentally in competition with them. Thus, a tribe would become a national concern primarily if and when it ran into trouble with another, neighboring tribe.

Most human groupings that were at least in a minimal sense culturally integrated, would not have existed in a larger environmental and social vacuum, and hence the resulting cultural patterning would have been critically influenced by direct or indirect acculturative pressures. Hence, most cultural groupings would have had some sense of a larger social and cultural history in relation to other similar or different groupings. Only anomalous isolated groups could exist for an indefinite time in that kind of culture historical vacuum. Such groups would have been bound for extinction eventually unless they somehow became reintegrated with the larger confluence of humanity.

A general pattern is evident therefore that tells us that general acculturative influence derivative of cultural sharing and variable reciprocal interactions was probably always an important influence upon resulting cultural patterns and adaptations achieved by different groups of people. This influence may have been nothing more than the general restriction of a group to a specified home range or territory, by which restriction or delimitation a cultural grouping was constrained to certain ranges of environmental niches and kinds of adaptation, which would in turn have influenced the social and symbolic patterning of the group in critical ways as well. Such a group could only move out of its own home range at considerable risk, and would have to be able to be welcomed by another group or alternatively, would have to make war with some other group, in order to acquire the home-range of the other group or be incorporated by another group.

Population growth patterns in relation to ranges and areas of occupation demonstrate that a population will increase in density in a central area, at which point overpopulation will result in the establishment of equilibrium and/or the degradation of the environment. It is expected that a large group will spin-off or splinter off into smaller groups that will be forced to spread out or else migrate out to the periphery of the home range or even beyond. Population growth is perhaps the simplest and most logical mechanism by which to explain, for instance, patterns of imperialism and organized aggression on outgroups. Such aggression can sustain higher rates of growth than under normal circumstances lacking aggression, although this sustained yield may tax the local environment more severely than if the population growth factors had just achieved and stabilized at some level of adaptive equilibrium. I believe both patterns are observable in the archaeological records, as well as mixed or intermittent types of patterns. I would suggest the chronically high rates of crime in contemporary developed society reflects the asymmetries of resource distribution in class-stratified societies, and this harkens back to the earliest days when

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All human groups typically have had a home range. This home range was the normal, total territorial of seasonal and perennial habitation and exploitation by a given group of people. Home ranges were circumscribed by several interacting variables. Usually, there would be competitive pressure for resources which were attached to occupation of a particular area during a particular time of the year.

So prevalent have home ranges been throughout human prehistory that it is hard to conceive of any group culture that does not have some established sense of a place on the ground, unless that group has been displaced and is forced to leave its home range to find a new one.

Migratory individuals and groups were frequently "on the move" in human prehistory, displaced by a number of possible factors that would lead a group of people to choose to abandon a particular area and risk the dangers of long-distance travel over unknown territory in order to find a new area for themselves. It is the kind of motivating factors, I believe, that force people to take the desperate decision of leaping out of tall buildings that are on fire--if the prospect of death is imminent by remaining in an area, then people will generally flee and seek to escape such a calamity.

Ecological studies of patterns of migration and territoriality reveal that some individuals are more inclined to move than others, and this pattern may be sexually biased. There is inherent risk to migration and the general pattern is to move to the first open niche and to remain there. Dispersal of population is a natural response to stress, but may also in some circumstances be the result of density-dependent relations leading to the spin off of excess population. This kind of pattern would be associated with adaptive radiation of human groups as well as with niche-expansion and diversification. A distinction for instance has been made between presaturation dispersal of healthy individuals during growth phases, and saturation dispersal based upon density dependent factors. This kind of calculus relates to theories of optimal foraging strategies, and the tradeoffs to movements to unknown areas that increase risk and uncertainty. The decision whether to leave one zone that has been degraded for a better but unknown zone is due primarily to the trade-off in costs remaining versus perceived risks in leaving. If people are starving in the homeland, or they themselves are being hunted into extinction by their cannibalistic neighbors, then there is little choice but to seek new territory.

Dispersal also requires habitat or environmental sinks, either marginal or open habitats, that permit animals to survive for at least a period of time. Sink habitats may actually support temporarily larger populations than source habitats that are more optimal for long-term survival. Risks and mortality tends to be higher in sink habitats, and source to sink movements tend to be irreversible.

Territorial competition, whether inter-cultural or intra-cultural, may result in the rise of a floating population that is not fixed to any particular area, but remains as a satellite population around a central or host region. There would always be pressure from this group, and a tendency to fill up any available spaces within the region that would become open. Floating population would be the most likely to migrate, and also the most susceptible to environmental fluctuations.

If intraspecific competition is high, which I suspect it has been for most of human prehistory due to the tendency for successful adaptations to lead to habitat saturation, then the principle of competitive exclusion operating between different cultural groupings would entail that mutual coexistence of groups within common home ranges was probably not tolerated, although there may have occurred important exceptions to this rule. Because most human populations put multi-factorial demands on their habitats and are niche generalists, it would seem likely that groups could not tolerate the invasion of outside individuals or groups into their territory. Human groups would in theory seek optimal territorial habitats that offered the best range of resources. Such optimum ranges would be complex and difficult to determine analytically, but it would be expected that groups would know it when they found it. It makes sense, as is the case even in modern systems, that in a fundamentally competitive environment, those people smart enough to work out coalitional strategies with potential competitors achieve an advantage of numbers over other out-groups. This would have provided a basis for regional integration and cooperation of different groupings within a larger network system.

The concept of a home range is important archaeologically. We can delineate a geographic region, for instance, that is incorporated by a city-state, for example, as the home range for that political entity. Such a city-state may in fact incorporate a number of smaller sub-units of group and individual home ranges within its sphere. It may incorporate a number of satellite villages and even outlying farmsteads and frontier regions or forests. We may see therefore that home ranges as socially or politically defined territories, may become in time stratified and variegated in a number of significant dimensions.

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Because archaeology is constrained in its construction of reality to the material and depositional nature of its primary object of study, and because human material culture reflect systems that are primarily technological and the products of human work and industry, regardless of what symbolic or ideological purposes these things may be used for, it stands to reason then that archaeology is first a study about past human adaptations, and the cultural differentials of these patterns to both social and natural environments. We can only vaguely guess the reasons why the Easter Islanders carved the giant stone Moas and transported them long-distance to erect them on another part of the Island. We find evidence of religion, lineage organization, even possibly caste-like stratification. But what we can most directly study about these giant stone artifacts of a bygone cultural patterning are their material and physical significance (where they were made, how old they may be, their size, weight, etc.) and the ecological aspects of their construction and their consequences upon the larger island as an ecological system. We can speculate on the kind of social organization that would have made their carving, transportation, erection and subsequent worship or symbolic use possible, and how this might be related to religion, competition for scarce resources, stratification, etc.

I have proposed understanding archaeological systems theory primarily from the standpoint of the eco-evolutionary implications of human material culture in adaptation to, selection of, and transformation of natural environmental settings in which these systems occurred. Adaptation in a human social environment became an increasing important aspect of this development. The primary purpose and origin of human culture was to mediate and facilitate human ecological adaptation, thus cultural systems must be construed as primarily ecological systems that permit and promote human survival and reproductive effort. Very early proto-hominid adaptive regimes and trends established by human populations that were organized into rudimentary cultural systems eventuated both in cultural selection and evolutionary development of the biological foundations of culture, and in cultural development itself.

An eco-evolutionary model is one that I have based upon the study of biological systems theory. That human populations, especially in an aboriginal state, tend to exhibit similar characteristics of other kinds of animal populations because in part they share similar eco-trophic niche profiles. Implications of social organization, patterning and process can often be interpreted in terms of the ecological correlates and models derived from the description of other animal or plant systems.

Eco-evolutionary systems theory has attempted to combine evolutionary theory with ecological models and system theory into a general synthesis. It can be said that all biological systems had ecological implications and a biotic framework within which evolutionary processes were played out. Evolution in turn worked to alter and modify the ecological surroundings that affected the adaptation of varying populations, and hence there was dynamic feedback between any kind of living system and its biotic surroundings. Human systems are best understood in these terms, except that cultural patterns become increasingly a central mediator in these biotic relationships, even to the point that it has in time come to alter the direction of evolutionary development on earth. Many of the patterns and ecological principles that occur in other animal populations, apply in a modified sense to human populations as well, and some of these patterns and processes have even carried over into the development of cultural systems that can be considered otherwise independent of biological determinants.

An eco-evolutionary and eco-cultural model of human systems theory is fundamentally different from a socio-biological or "bio-cultural" mode, nor is its application to archaeological systems theory the same as the use of the evolutionary models in archaeology. The emphasis of an eco-evolutionary approach is upon the study of human ecology, both in its biological and cultural dimensions, while the emphasis in biocultural or sociobiological approaches is more directly on the evolutionary implications of such systems. The ecological relationship to evolutionary processes is explicated more clearly, such that the direct application of evolutionary models and theory to cultural explanation is largely avoided or deemed unnecessary. The way that evolution therefore plays into the understanding of cultural systems is fundamentally different than how this relationship is understood in sociobiological terms, and thus in eco-evolutionary frameworks the position and evolutionary significance of culture is treated more realistically and less ideologically that it is with sociobiological theories that jump directly into genetic explanations of cultural patterning. In fact, in eco-evolutionary models, cultural selection processes that are directly independent of any evolutionary determinism, come to play a critical role influencing the patterning of natural selection and evolutionary development on earth. Human ecology has lead to a reshaping of the natural ecology of the earth. We have through processes of domestication altered and transformed many different species of plants and animals, and even microbes, for our own purposes, and we have thus created entirely new ecological systems with a scale and kind of eco-cultural diversity that is not found in natural systems. To a great extent, human eco-cultural processes have been disruptive and destructive of natural patterns and systems, but not entirely so. At the same time, many natural systems have been displaced and supplanted by eco-cultural systems.

The relationship of eco-evolutionary and eco-cultural theory to theories of cultural ecology and ecological anthropology is critical to the understanding of how these theories coalesce to paint a larger and more accurate picture of human systems. Cultural ecology tended to see cultural modes of adaptation to different environmental settings as shaped by cultural patterns and social structures that we considered to some extent independent of the environment in which they were situated. Ecological anthropology interpreted cultural systems as being founded upon ecological principles, and serving in some direct manner an ecological function beyond the problem of adaptation and production. Culture in such models took on ecological dimensions of understanding, such that even symbolic systems were seen to ultimately be explained in terms of their ecological function.

Eco-cultural theory combines these perspectives with a functionalist model of human systems that is framed within an eco-evolutionary framework. Human cultural systems developed and arose in the first place within an eco-evolutionary context in which human survival and reproductive success were the principle constraining determinants of such systems. Many basic social and cultural patterns apparent in human systems today, far removed from their original precursors, were fundamentally defined on a template of patterning that was evolved millions of years previously. Much of the subsequent elaboration of such systems, their convolution and modification, must be seen as derivative from these basic patterns and the structural order they represented. It is possible to define, for example, the competition for resources with social systems as similar in structure to the intraspecific and interspecific competition for resources in a natural framework, and often leading to very similar consequences.

It is my contention that such similarity is more than just metaphorical analogy occurring at different levels of systems integration. Many social patterns and processes that are basic and fundamental to human systems are homologically related to similar kinds of ecologically defined patterns in the natural order of life. They arose from the same origins, for the same reasons, and ultimately serve the same basic sets of purposes, which in the final analysis is reproductive survival. If, along the way, human systems become culturally shaped and elaborated in interesting ways in which their adaptive significance is not evident or obvious, this is because cultural systems can be said to have taken on secondary characteristics and functions that are derivative of, but undetermined by, adaptive considerations.

The interesting aspect about human cultural patterning and its adaptive functioning is that it has permitted humankind to adapt to and exploit a wide variety of eco-trophic niches and to adaptively generalize and expand its eco-trophic niche in a manner unparalleled by any other known biological species. The development of human social organization has been founded upon the capacity to exploit and appropriate, and in time to domesticate and culturally select for a range of niches that permit human populations to achieve adaptive stability and growth over time, or what might be called functional eco-cultural equilibrium.

Agricultural and horticultural development is evidence of this. Models look at a critical "neolithic" shift from a primary dependence upon the opportunistic exploitation of food resources and the controlled or managed production of food resources that were therefore more dependable and permitted an elevation of eco-cultural equilibrium and increasing diversification of social adaptation and organization. Systems theory as this extends to eco-cultural models also entails that certain associated patterns will emerge at the same time as the emergence of agriculture. We can expect some incipient form of social stratification, for instance, that will articulate around the control and differential access to resources. We expect as well the rise of a rich symbolic culture around a religion that shifts increasingly from an animistic and shamanistic orientation toward a priesthood and a monolithic orthodoxy in which spirit forces acquire distinctive social identities and social roles, and the religion itself acquires a template of social organization. The role of religion at this point is not so much the regulation of the relationship between humans and nature, though this will remain, as much as it becomes a matter of the regulation of the relationships between people, and between the person and the social system as a whole. At this stage of development, we can say that the earlier and more basic or primitive patterns of eco-cultural adaptation become embedded and to some extent buried beneath the emergent complexes that over lay it. It also entails that these basic relationships become ordered and regulated in some less random and more rigid manner than if such systems existed without any further elaboration or social symbolic overlay.

In this case, it is clear that the rise of secondary institutional forms of social functioning and symbolic legitimization derives from and is the consequence of the capacity to more directly harness and control the ecologically based adaptive strategies by means of domestication, development of primary technology, and social organization for work or production, as well as social organization for reproduction. It is typically in largely agrarian contexts that the highest rates of birth are to be found, as well as the highest population densities, excepting some unusually high densities in central urban centers.

The florescence of the cave art cultures in France and Spain are indicative of the early importance of symbolic expression and institutions in cultural life, and the fundamental eco-cultural function that is played by the symbolic organization of experience upon which cultural patterning is based. This rich civilizational complex preceded all known forms of agriculture, and probably most known forms of domestication. Its development required a fundamental knowledge of iron and other pigments and the ability to use these to make paint. The capacity to represent animals in a highly naturalistic and realistic form, from memory, by the light of small oil lamps, and possibly entailing the construction of some kind of scaffolding in order to reach ceilings and high walls, entails a sophistication of both mind and culture that is equal to the modern equivalent in its basic form.

At the same time, cultural patterning has been a feedback mechanism to its natural surroundings such that it has permitted the reshaping of these natural surroundings in both ecological and evolutionary terms. It has also led to a general and chronic situation for human systems, in that intraspecific competition has come to weigh more heavily as a determinant of such systems than interspecific competition has been. As long as human populations were kept within check in natural environments in terms of interspecific competition and human vulnerability to natural selection, then these populations were susceptible to and governed by natural forces and processes. Cultural adaptation gave human groups the leverage and means to escape this natural imperative, and to prevent or interfere with processes of natural selection by substituting processes of cultural selection in their place.

From the standpoint of archaeological systems, the problems and understanding of human adaptation are primarily functional or functionalist problems. Functional problems are systems models, and have structuralist implications that reflect the regular articulation of rules and principles governing the behavior and relationships of complex systems. The functionalist models that are suitable to the development of archaeological systems theory are therefore those that are primarily concerned with human social organization for ecological adaptation and the achievement or adjustment of eco-cultural equilibrium within some kind of environmental framework. The shape of the environmental framework overall will to some extent constrain the resulting shape of the pattern of eco-cultural equilibrium that is achieved by a particular group of people. It sets the standard limits as to what may be achieved and defines the constraints built into the environment that cannot be overcome except perhaps by means of the innovation or invention of new technologies or functional cultural forms.

We can say safely that throughout most of human history, human identity was defined primarily and predominantly by its relationship to the group, and that group identity has always been the major constraining factor governing social processes and patterns. This is true because early proto-cultural adaptations probably permitted humans to coalesce into fairly large social formations, at least as a function of average densities over time and place. Secondly, it has always probably been an imperative for humans that survival of the individual depended mostly if not entirely upon that individual's connection to one group or another. In a general and loose sense, we can state that all animals are fundamentally social in that they depend upon heterosexual reproduction and must maintain socially interactive populations in order to achieve this. But it becomes another issue altogether if we want to differentiate groups in terms of "how" social they may be in some relative sense compared to other alternative groups. We find for instance Orangutans to be fairly a-social creatures for a greater part of their lives. On the other hand, both Chimpanzees and Gorillas usually form small bands often centered around one alpha male and a host of subordinates, but neither primate appears as social as the Baboon who may amass in troops of a hundred or more individuals. I believe human beings evolved fairly early on in groups reflecting sizes that are found today in Gorilla and Chimpanzee groups.

In such social contexts, individual survival and reproductive success depended upon its attachment and positioning with the group. The group afforded a screen of protection for the individual that the individual otherwise would not have had. At the same time, I believe such groups can be defined by their sense of cooperative effort, especially when it comes to the challenges and logistics of social nurturance of the young and prolonged post-partum infant dependency. The group context therefore provided the framework for the early imprinting and socialization of the infant. That these early groupings were family structures that were based upon the principle of descent or lineage probably goes without saying. But lineage and family connection may not have been as formally defined as they subsequently became in neolithic periods, during which traditional family structures remained important. I suspect that the earliest groups were defined by female-centered descent groups, with associated bands of brothers, cousins or alternative fictive brothers who worked and hunted and made war in mostly a cooperative manner. That democracy has been a rare bird in human history, and that authoritarianism the norm, suggests that the model of Homo hierarchicus is probably the most representative, and that humans have always had a social pecking order with one male or a single tight coalition of males playing king of the mountain.

Many of the competition models that are used in ecology theory can be found to be applicable in modified form to human social systems and group theory. Unlike rutting caribou, it is clear that in human competition, the occurrence of coalitional structures and of interference competition between subgroups, or between a single subgroup and the subordinate members who are fundamentally atomized and hence marginalized.

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Human populations, like any other animal populations, follow key biological imperatives that are related to their evolutionary survival. These are the imperatives of adaptive adjustment to an environment, to maintain energy and metabolic needs, and for reproduction of the species. These requirements can be generally expressed in terms of two general sets of strategies adopted by human populations, the strategies of feeding and breeding.

The key principles underlying eco-cultural systems can be said to be the functions of feeding and breeding, which relate basic patterns of adaptation to meeting the fundamental challenges of biological survival of a population--namely growth, health and physical survival, and biological reproduction. These issues are at least tacitly understood to be true in most if not all models of archaeological systems, but rarely are they made explicit or central to the explanation of the model or system in itself.

It is precisely these sets of critical resources that all groups must organize themselves to serve and achieve. How they do so depends in part upon the environment that they inhabit or mark out as part of their range, and in part upon the arbitrary cultural factors that may be associated with any particular group. Feeding patterns entail eco-culturally the establishment and maintenance of food-getting strategies that connect with the natural environment in a manner that, ideally, would exhibit long-term stability and minimal random fluctuation. Humans have been found to be capable of exploiting a very broad range of food resources in the natural environment, and they have actually added many derivative or secondary food resources. It is evident that the main line of hominids at least always had the requirement of good protein sources, which required that they were to some extent predatory. These protein resources were supplemented with crude sources of fat, carbohydrate and vegetables and plant food from which they derived secondary forms of nutrition such as vitamins, sugars, oils and fats.

Successful food-getting strategies would have resulted in successful breeding or reproductive strategies, and much that is fundamentally eco-cultural about humankind centers around the formation of social groupings serving the purposes of biological reproduction.

Sexual reproduction requires other kinds of social strategies involving mate availability and choice. Often, the requirements of feeding and breeding are partitioned seasonally and geographically in animal populations. What is seen in human beings are several sets of interrelated facets--females are sexually receptive year round, which means probably that the problems of breeding and feeding were not partitioned in any simple manner. There appears as well to have been a sexual selection for physical traits that promote or enhance human sexuality. The other set of traits associated with human reproductivity is the prolonged period of post-natal dependency and deceleration of the growth curve of humans. It is evident therefore that breeding and reproduction was a year-long preoccupation of mature females.

I suspect that the fundamental division of labor in primitive human society was not so much hunting and gathering, as it was between feeding and breeding. We may now only speculate on the kind of social organization that would permit this pattern to take hold and evolve into human society as we know this today. I suspect that even in early human populations, there would be a premium placed on prized protein packages and resources that would best supplement and promote human reproductive growth and development.

I suspect furthermore that high rates of infant mortality would have prompted similarly high rates of conception and impregnation. If such a view of the early hominid world is not a "liberated" one from a feminists point of view, I doubt the idea of feminism, or even of equality, existed at this time--it would not have had any immediate survival value.

I claim that protein resources were always a critical limiting factor in human populations because humans cannot make all their amino acids, nor can all amino acids be derived from plant resources. Critical to human growth and long-term health would be the availability of essential amino acids that could only be obtained from quality sources of protein, especially from other animals, fish, and, if these fail, other human beings.

Hunting strategies in such a case would have been predatory on certain kinds of game and opportunistic on a wide variety of food resources. We may for instance distinguish patterns of Type I, II and III Response by predators, and it seems to me that human populations would have followed all three types of response depending upon the environmental variables concerned. Especially evident would be a type three response or compensatory response of facultative predation that would permit humans to conveniently switch to alternative prey when predation on a preferred species leads to stress upon that species. The notion of search image that is associated with a type III predatory response pattern is associated I believe quite clearly with the development of symbolic pattern recognition processes in early humans. Naturalistic animal forms are among the easiest and most universally generalized images recognized by human beings. Stimuli of early recognition are the lack of symmetry of an animal form when seen from a lateral view, and the prototypical shapes of animal forms (four legs, tail, head, etc.).

The general thrust of this argument depicts our proto-humans as generalized predators for which selection favored the capacity to develop, maintain and retain an increasing number of search images as well as probably mapping and other pattern recognition processes, that allowed human groups to exploit a broad range of resources in the environment, or what can be called niche-generalization. It is expected that humans, lacking the natural traits of top predators, substituted phenotypically acquired cultural traits that permitted predation at trophic levels otherwise not within their grasp. Numerical response would have been a typical secondary patterning of human predation. Primary numerical response or aggregative response would be an increase in the number of humans swamping their prey populations. Secondary or long-term numerical response would lead to patterns of migration fluctuating with changing prey densities. This entails that human home ranges would have had to have expanded and consisted of a fairly large area, which also entails a kind of extensification (versus intensification) that led to a low ratio of people per unit area of land as well as to local overpopulation of resource rich regions and also low efficiency of resource utilization per area occupied. The second pattern of numerical response would have been fluctuating rates of predator natality and mortality in response to changing prey densities.

Type III response patterns also lead to differential foraging strategies that relate to the efficiency of energy expenditure in the hunting of prey. We may identify both optimal and risk-sensitive foraging strategies as applicable to human predatory responses. We may identify as well satisficing strategies and the marginal value theorem which states that a population will depend upon a specific resource only as long as that resource provides profitable returns. This relates back to the basis of Type III predatory response that is based upon the threshold of security, in which a particular kind of prey will be selected only as long as it yields profitable returns.

Human cultural systems evolved therefore to function at a relatively high energy state, which meant active defence from threat of predation, seconded by flight, and the active pursuit of prey, seconded by attempting to trap prey. Within an ecosystemic model, humans achieved success to the extent that they came to occupy higher rungs of an eco-trophic niche pyramid in any system that they happened to occupy. Ranges of predatory human populations would have been relatively large, requiring "continental" proportions to effectively maintain large populations. At the same time, human population densities would have increased, creating an odd situation. The local environments humans inhabited would have been fundamentally stressed.

In this human social organization evolved in a manner unlike any other animal group known. The closest correlate was probably Chimpanzee groups, but even this may not clearly represent early human social formations. Human populations must have been both mobile and yet capable of sustaining large local densities. A transhumant pattern over a home range within a larger effective territory would have been necessary.

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Every group of people who ever existed on earth were fundamentally challenged by their general environmental situation to achieve some kind of effective eco-cultural pattern of response. It is true that most groups simply inherit a system as part of a larger tradition, but still there is a need always to adapt that system to the ever changing contexts. Even if environmental factors were not continuously varying, it is likely that from year to year and from generation to generation people would seek to alter their eco-cultural system with the aim of either improving their relationship to the environment or altering their environment. Endogenous change is an essential aspect of all cultural systems, and we call this form of change "drift" when it seems to have no directional orientation or larger sense of purpose.

We can say that Roman culture of the 7^th Century B. C. was not Roman culture of the time of Jesus, nor was it Roman culture in an exact sense a century later. Roman culture is a good example, for it was so long-lived, but it was simply not the same thing at the end of its time as the beginning. Neither can we look at the Italian people of Rome today and find much trace of a distinctively Roman culture. I think the Chinese of central China exhibit in many fundamental ways a basic continuity of culture that may extend back in time several thousand years, but this is due perhaps to an inherent sino-centrism and xenophobia of the Chinese, as well as the fact that China seems to be capable of universal incorporation of foreign cultural elements without dramatically altering its internal profile or sense of order. By far, the greatest changes ever to have happened to mainland Chinese culture has been in the past half Century of communist rule, but even here communism appears to have been molded to fit a traditional framework of the culture, where values of filial piety feed into symbolic loyalty for the state. Just the same, if one were to meet the Shang Chinese of the earliest Bronze age periods, one would find fundamental differences of culture with the Chin Chinese who built the Great Wall, or the later Han Chinese. Surely, if one goes to central China today, one is dealing with the direct ancestors of the peasants and officials of these early states, and many of the same cultural forms and basic institutions have survived virtually unaltered, and yet there would still be a sense of difference between modern and ancient Chinese.

It is obvious to myself, if to no one else, that the Roman and Chinese systems represented large scale civilizational complexes that were long lasting, capable of universal incorporation, and had maintained a sense of complex equilibrium in their regional settings. Similarly we can point to the Hindu system of the Indian subcontinent. I believe that the Egyptian system is similar as well, though it was overlaid with a Moslem veil. In the Arthurian legends of the Mabinogion, we find the glimmerings of a feudal system at the brink of a Dark Age, with the promise of a civilizational complex to come. The consequential British empire suggests the fluorescence of a complex and variegated cultural pattern that was the end-product of this early prehistory. None of these complexes were achieved overnight--all went through multiple phases of growth and developmental change. All experienced numerous set-backs that, if things had gone just a little differently on this battlefield or that, would have resulted in possibly a whole different trajectory being taken. Surely, none of these civilizations was achieved without a great deal of bloodshed and some form of involuntary servitude.

I harp on the great historical civilizations only to demonstrate how transculturation can occur over time and space, how internal endogenous change and drift are a part of any system, how acculturation can affect a people in a reciprocal manner, and how the end products of these historical trajectories will be fundamentally different from the people who started the system off in the first place. These same principles would hold for small cultural and civilizational complexes as much as they held for the Great Empires. Undoubtedly many minor civilizational complexes have arisen and fallen only to remain forgotten and buried in some remote region. It is expected that the dominant cultural orientation in an area will be the preferred mode of expression, but this dominant orientation will also tend to be affected by the introduction of elements of the subordinate cultural orientations that it incorporates. If one crosses cultural boundaries to live and work in a foreign society, it is implicit to the situation that one will have to adopt and adapt to one's hosts cultural values and orientation, and not the other way around.

Human beings have been interacting with their environments in a similar eco-cultural manner almost from the beginning, if we could exactly draw a point in time when we could say that such and such represented the birth of human culture. Rather, human cultural patterning was not achieved all at once, but gradually arose over time and took shape as it arose to incorporate more and greater numbers of different elements. The human cultural landscape of 100,000 BP looked much different than it did at 1,000,000 B. P. or at 1000 BP If we took time slices every 100,000 years for the past two or three million years, at each slice we would find a fundamentally different pattern operating, and yet still we would see some continuity and preservation of earlier patterns. We would end up with twenty or thirty different slices, arranged in sequential order, but each varying considerable than any of the others. We could not say that the 100,000 BP time slice was more like the one million time slice than the one thousand B. P. slice. Surely, variation appears to have increased with time, and this increase appears to have followed a log-linear kind of curve. More changes and pattern variation probably occurred in the last 100,000 years than in the previous 1,000,000 years before that time, and hence we might conclude that 100,000 would be more like its previous periods than its subsequent periods.

What I believe one would find operating within the most of the time slices up until the last one would have been a fundamentally very similar kind of rudimentary, prototypical cultural patterning that was based upon crude lithic technologies. Language systems would have varied almost familially or within more extended lineage systems, and these themselves would have been very basic and almost iconographic in communicative function and capacity. Common language would have been worked out around shared hearths, and would have created a sense of tradition about the hearth that would bear witness to the succession of one generation after another with no great or dramatic cultural variation or change. In such a broader context, the fate of one cultural system over the other would have been more or less the same, as all would have had almost equally likely odds of failing out. It would have been like a paleolithic dark ages that may even have had semi-feudal organizational structures across a vast and variegated landscape. Of course, the structure of such a society would probably have been small bands based upon big-man politics between competing groups. We could not say that such groups were preferably patrilineal or matrilineal or some intermediate form. Hawaiian structures based upon a bilateral system seem to me to have been the most adaptively flexible structures suitable for such contexts. No single cultural system could achieve such superiority of numbers or conditions that it would be capable of effecting a long lasting civilizational complex. All groups, being more or less equal to one another in terms of size and technology and structural patterning and ecological capacity for adaptation, would have therefore been in this overarching kind of scramble competition for resources. I would not know what a reasonable estimate for a populational or social unit of early hominids may have been. Generally, they are stereotypically depicted at most in groups of tens--some have been wise enough to endow Neanderthal societies with structures that might have gone into the hundreds. It is impossible to say really what a long-term moving average would have been, but apparently this moving average probably increased gradually and then more rapidly in a logarithmic manner as a function of time as well.

Without a doubt, as is evident with more recent civilizations, certain groups sought out and seized the advantage of occupying strategic areas and core ecological zones that offered a greater abundance of resources. Long term occupation of such regions would have led to a population doubling that would have maxed out within three or five generations, even if very high infant mortality rates could have been presumed to occur. Thus, within any given area where there is annual or seasonal abundance, population growth would have to achieve some sense of equilibrium at a stable level. This would entail that some system of internalized warfare, sacrifice, or periodic expulsion of groups would have served to maintain population levels in check. Alternatively, as suggested by the New Guinea highland evidence, which appears to have supported fairly high densities of primitive populations for prolonged periods of time, such mechanisms as post-partum sexual taboos and lengthened intervals between births would have had the effect of tapering population growth to manageable levels.

If we took our 100,000 year time slices, and broke this down to 1,000 year sub-slices, we would end up with a sequence of 100 units each of which may have spanned between 40 and 60 or 70 generations. If we consider even infant mortality rates at 60 or 70 percent, we would still get a small group rapidly filling its environmental niches within just a few generations of time, within a one to two hundred year period at most. A thousand year interval is much more than adequate to witness the rise and fall of numerous small groupings, and the succession of five to ten such climax periods. If we get down to the 100 year interval scale, and we sliced up the last 4,000,000 years accordingly, we would basically end up with 40,000 such slices to have to deal with. The amount of transition from first to last slice would have been tremendous, as well as the amount of oscillation of pattern between. Such a 100 year interval scale is just long enough for human populations to lose a sense of living memory and experience from beginning to end, and for the noetic function of culture in preserving oral knowledge to become important. By modern standards, if we get a community size much over 1000 people, it becomes very difficult for all people to know everyone else on a first name basis. Above that limit, probably different kinds of social control mechanisms would have to operate to keep everyone within the same playing field. In this regard, we must also ask what size a group needs to be to be relatively viable from an evolutionary perspective. A group of ten runs the risk of total disaster almost on a daily basis. Such a group might have only one or two key individuals upon whom the rest would depend, and these may die at any time, leaving the group without a central focus. A group size of a hundred or a thousand appears to me to be a better unit to deal with--even for purposes of breeding, consideration of reproductive viability, mate choice and availability, would demand numbers that reach into the thousands if not tens of thousands. A group size that hovered at around a hundred at the edge of a peripheral region, back of beyond so to speak, would become within a century or two thoroughly inbred, and long term inbreeding would probably prove quite detrimental to the group. It is obvious therefore that even very early groups established larger scale, regional systems based upon regular exchange and interaction. They had to do so for the sake of their survival and continuance.

One aspect of human society and human nature is, I believe, our tremendous social capacity that is culturally induced and not instinctually determined. We have a built-in need for social relationships, but this need is not rooted in heredity rather than in the lack of hereditary constraints that determine that we should always run in large herds. We are not herd animals at all. We resemble more pack animals, but our cultural plasticity and our social dependency entails that we can become, under the right conditions, herd forming animals. In other words, pack size can increase considerably under the right conditions. Under other conducive conditions, atomization can set in almost to the point that it becomes each individual for themselves and all social order and organization becomes lost. It also entails that if we have strong social tendencies, we also have basic anti-social tendencies as well. If one looks at the majority of murder cases in civil contexts today, one would find that they are related either to jealousy and spousal-sexual abuse and relations, or else to competition over or control of money. The regulation of our social behavior is culturally overdetermined, and genetically underdetermined.

Under the right conditions, it can be expected that groups can coalesce and grow within a century or two to the limits of their range, without attempting to expand this range, and will establish a longer term system in equilibrium that would last possibly for a millennia, and in isolation, possibly as much as 10,000 years. Eventually, each system would break down due to a number of different factors--acculturation, drift of elements from the center, environmental degradation, climate variability, or natural disaster. Epidemic disease as a widespread disruptive agency terminating a long term cultural sequence or complex should not be discounted as a potentially important factor. There is not reason not to expect that this was as true in a basic sense for early Homo erectus populations as it was apparently true for indigenous populations of the proto-historical contact period. Populations would have waxed and waned in a regular tempo, and the cultural complexes associated with these populations would have risen and fallen as well. There is no reason, under the right conditions, not to assume that Homo erectus populations might have coalesced into regional complexes numbering in the thousands or even tens of thousands in areas featuring rich ecological resources and diversity of niches. Just the same, these early hominid social formations would probably have been fundamentally unstable and would have been only seasonally regulated, with seasonal concentration and dispersal occurring. They would have been unstable because, I believe, heavy hunter-gather and forager formations on a landscape, even in rich resource zones, would rapidly take a heavy toll upon these resources. It would be like putting too many lions on a herd of zebras--the herd of zebras would diminish, and the lions would be left eating buzzards or their own carcasses. Cyclical crashes of great herds, and related oscillations of climate and other ecological cycles, would entail that long term hominid social formations would have been difficult to sustain to the point that the population could reach larger sizes and achieve an eco-cultural equilibrium.