Households and communities: evolution in Homo sapiens

Abstract

Recent developments in the theory of social evolution advance arguments that the overall pattern of human evolution can be seen as resulting from three mechanisms—biological, cultural, and social—which arose sequentially. This evolutionary framework is applied in an overview of the intimate group and the community, biologically based structures of residence and group defense, respectively, within primate species. For Homo sapiens, the intimate group took the form of a household led by a pairbonded couple. The opening section provides a narrative of the intimate groups and community groups within hominin species that preceded Homo sapiens. The second section summarizes basic models for each of the three evolutionary regimes, in terms of Darwinian variation, reproduction, and selection. Each regime explores species through the behavior of individuals as well as types of group behavior. In the third section, theories and narrative are combined to propose causal steps in historical transformation, leading to the human household. The last two parts explore the changing roles of households in the era of agriculture and the long-term transfer of laborers from the household to the community sector, a process gradually expanding the productivity of each sector.