The evolutionary context of human economics

Non-human animals are faced with intricate choices demanding rational decisions in order to ensure that they gross energetic and nutritional returns sufficient to cover the costs of movement, predator defense, reproduction, and physiological maintenance. The study of these complex relationships (ecology) is similar in many ways to the study of human economics, and the similarity perhaps reflects underlying common mechanisms relevant to the origins of human economy. In the behavioral sciences, extrapolating from non-human primates to humans is potentially hazardous—one runs the risk of excessively anthropomorphizing non-human species, of implying hard-wired genetic control for humans, or of making up “just so” stories to explain human attributes by facile analogy to non-humans. Despite these problems, there is growing recognition that an ability to make intricate, rational, economic-type decisions predicated on context is an attribute shared by many non-human and human beings alike. Palaeoanthropology illuminates the unique evolutionary and cultural history of human beings, which when integrated with ecological and behavioral studies, may allow us to generate hypotheses about origins and distinctive attributes of human economy.