The Food Sharing Debate: A Case Study from Siberia

A difficulty with the show-off argument is the question of whether the signal production is the function of an adaptation for hunting large game or a by-product of some other adaptation, such as ambition, status striving, or social endeavoring. What specifically is the show-off adaptation? Adaptation is an onerous concept, and should be used only when there is clear evidence of design (Williams 1966). A distinction of levels of analysis is helpful here. The proximate level of explanation deals with how an adaptation works in individuals. Proximate-level causation "concerns the direct mechanisms that bring something about. It is a structural description of the individual as a 'behaving machine"" (Daly and Wilson 1983:15). With the show-off hypothesis, one would have to show how reputation building is related motivationally to big-game hunting, and not warriorship or oratory skills, or some other social definition of success (unless big-game hunting could be shown to be a part of cultural complex that included warriorship and oration). Second, and closely related to proximate function is the developmental form and context of traits. Ontogeny refers to individual experience and development. Ontogenetic or developmental explanations concern changes over life-times (Daly and Wilson 1983). Social relations important throughout an individual's life change with the dynamics of changing somatic and reproductive interests (Alexander 1987, Daly and Wilson 1983). Social and environmental developmental factors are relevant here. For example, maybe hunting small game is more the providence of individuals, the less skilled, or women and children, while big game hunting is more of a cooperative adult activity.

What caused the evolution of this apparently costly behavior, documented in contemporary societies? Ultimate-level explanations deal with the evolutionary conditions or reasons for the natural selection of a phenotypic trait, such as the male peacock's tail. According to Daly and Wilson (1983:15), ultimate-level explanation concerns the adaptive significance of the trait, its "selective consequences, which must ultimately entail reproductive consequences." For natural selection to operate on a trait on the ultimate level, "the behaviour must not only have consequences for reproduction but also be a consequence of the elements that are reproduced (Ingold 1996:30, his italics). This last point is what is not clear with the show-off hypothesis.

Social striving through food sharing is something that is widely downplayed in hunting and gathering societies, and differentiation is discouraged in peasant communities and egalitarian communes. What actual social goals prevailed in the evolutionary past most likely varied a lot. The show-off model has difficulty explaining food sharing where the proximate goal is the satisfaction of taking care of people in local communities (Bodenhorn 2000), and the strategic manipulation of the flow of resources for provisioning (Kitanishi 2000). The main characteristic of food sharing that has been emphasized is the transfer of resources to free riders, who put social pressure on hunters to give it. "Only after division and distribution when he controls a share himself could he exchange it for something else. Like anyone else, he can only trade or exchange the portion this is his private property." (Hawkes 2001: 224).

Comparison is an important means of testing phylogenetic explanations. The show-off story starts from hypothetical conditions of marginal value of defense of resources, as modeled in the producers, seekers, and circumstantialist game. Comparing reports of demand sharing and tolerated theft among contemporary hunter-gatherers with, distributive processes among chimpanzees and other species (capuchins, for example Wilkinson 1988), an homology of distribution with two phases is identified: 1) multiple claims on common source of meat, and (2) individual control of shares with transfer, respectively (Hawkes 2001:225). The main difference for humans is the obtainable prey size, which allows more shares to be claimed. In the show-off hypothesis, hunters start off minimizing costs of defense by providing to free riders. Continuing this phylogentic hypothesis forward, after languages evolve, selection favors advertisement of male quality. Show-off hunters develop reputations and become reliable allies and mates. In effect, this argument is a combination of the producers, seekers, and circumstantialists model with the reciprocity model, where a benefit to the hunter is status and reproductive success. The argument also combines phylogenetic hypotheses with proximate-level decision-making (cost/benefit of advertising). The show-off literature may actually best be understood as a discussion on the level of phylogeny rather than adaptive function. The phylogenetic level of explanation deals with the history of a trait through evolutionary time. According to Daly's and Wilson's usage (1983:16), a phylogenetic explanation is "an account of the evolutionary progression by which the behavior (or the proximate causal structure underlying it) has been formed out of some preexisting organization." The description is one that focuses on forms, whereas, the ultimate explanation focuses on function of a trait over an evolutionary time-scale.