Artificial Life Meets Anthropology: A Case of Aggression in Primitive Societies

One of the greatest challenges in the modern biological and social sciences has been to understand the evolution of altruistic and cooperative behaviors. General outlines of the answer to this puzzle are currently emerging as a result of developments in the evolutionary theories of multilevel selection, cultural group selection, and strong reciprocity. In spite of the progress in theory there is shortage of studies devoted to the connection of theoretical results to the real social systems. This paper presents the model of cooperation which is based on assumptions of heritable markers, constrained resource, and local interactions. Verification of model’s predictions with the real data on aggression in archaic egalitarian societies has demonstrated that initial modeling assumptions are acceptable as major factors of social evolution for these societies.

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