The Energetics of Uniquely Human Subsistence Strategies

Authors

• Thomas S. Kraft, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Vivek V. Venkataraman, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse
• Ian J. Wallace, The University of New Mexico
• Alyssa N. Crittenden, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
• Nicholas B. Holowka, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
• Jonathan Stieglitz, Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse
• Jacob Harris, University of California, Los Angeles
• David A. Raichlen, University of Southern California
• Brian Wood, Max-Planck-Institut für evolutionäre Anthropologie
• Michael Gurven, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Herman Pontzer, Duke University

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-24-2021

Publication Title

Science

Volume

374

Issue

6575

First page number:

1

Last page number:

14

Abstract

The suite of derived human traits, including enlarged brains, elevated fertility rates, and long developmental periods and life spans, imposes extraordinarily high energetic costs relative to other great apes. How do human subsistence strategies accommodate our expanded energy budgets? We found that relative to other great apes, human hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers spend more energy but less time on subsistence, acquire substantially more energy per hour, and achieve similar energy efficiencies. These findings revise our understanding of human energetic evolution by indicating that humans afford expanded energy budgets primarily by increasing rates of energy acquisition, not through energy-saving adaptations such as economical bipedalism or sophisticated tool use that decrease subsistence costs and improve the energetic efficiency of subsistence. We argue that the time saved by human subsistence strategies provides more leisure time for social interaction and social learning in central-place locations and would have been critical for cumulative cultural evolution.

Disciplines

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | Evolution

File Format

pdf

File Size

1440 KB

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Repository Citation

Kraft, T. S., Venkataraman, V., Wallace, I., Crittenden, A. N., Holowka, N., Stieglitz, J., Harris, J., Raichlen, D., Wood, B., Gurven, M., Pontzer, H. (2021). The Energetics of Uniquely Human Subsistence Strategies. Science, 374(6575), 1-14.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.abf0130