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45 Noble Savages or Consummate Consumers The Behavioral Ecology of Building a Green Conservation Future BOBBI S. LOW Scholars in many fields know the litany of ecological problems we face today: a changing climate, increasingly severe floods and droughts, the extirpation of many species. Today we are more numerous and consume more per capita than ever before. One prominent “explanation” is that we are so isolated from ecological forces that we have no idea of our impacts. If we were to return to our “Noble Savage” state, consuming less, all would be well. This old romantic notion of “noble” indigenous peoples, consuming little (with an implied concern for future resources) dates at least back to John Dryden’s Conquest of Grenada (1669–70, pt. 1, act 1, scene 1): “I am as free as Nature first made man, / Ere the base laws of servitude began, / When wild in woods the Noble Savage ran.” Those of us who study human behavior in an evolutionary perspective—behavioral ecologists and evolutionary anthropologists and psychologists—know something about the resource consumption patterns of peoples in traditional societies and may have something to offer about what kinds of conservation strategies are more, and what kinds are less, likely to convince ourselves to behave sustainably in particular cases. HUMAN LIFE HISTORIES: WHY ARE WE SUCH EXPENSIVE ANIMALS? Behavioral ecology argues that environmental conditions shape the lifetimes and behavior of organisms, and that by crafting testable hypotheses and making the right observations, we can understand the basic rules that drive a species’ behavioral ecology, including consumption patterns. Darwin understood this; that is why he began his Origin of Species (1859) with the observation that organisms are generally well suited to their environments. But what about that really smart, social ape, Homo sapiens? Because we are changing environmental conditions in ways that have strong impacts on other organisms, we need not only to study others’ life histories and behavior, but also to turn the same lens on our own behavior. Recently, behavioral ecologists have turned their attention to humans, applying the same rigor 46| Bobbi S. Low and rules that we use for other species (e.g., Cronk, 1991a, 1991b, 1991c, 1993, 2000, 2004; Irons, 1979; Borgerhoff-Mulder, 1991). In some ways, our life history is quite mundane for a primate of our size; in other ways, our life history is odd. For example, many features of life history are driven by size, so we make predictions based on mother’s size. Newborn human infants are large for their mother’s size (compared to other primate infants). Human pregnancies are almost exactly the length one would predict from size (again, relative to other primates), though: how do we make large babies in a relatively short time? Human infants are weaned earlier than the “general” primate pattern; if we weaned our babies at the “standard” rate, our kids would be almost four before we weaned them; instead they are about two or two and a half in traditional and historical societies, and as young as six months in some modern cultures. (Here we know something about the important factors: whereas a mother gorilla or chimpanzee nurses her infant alone, in humans, others besides the mother bring food and care.) Babies’ brains are much larger at birth than we would predict—and while the brains of other primate babies grow very slowly after birth, in human infants, The postnatal growth rate continues to be really fast (Low 2013). Men are the real superconsumers in most societies. Most traditional societies, though not necessarily most individuals alive today, are polygynous (about 85–90 percent depending on the sample; e.g., Murdock, 1967, 1981; Murdock and White, 1969; Human Relations Area Files, 2013). How does a man succeed in marrying more than one wife? Though the particulars vary, the key to a man’s lineage success in these societies is access to reproductively important resources (e.g., Low and Heinen, 1993; Low and Ridley, 1994; Low, 1996a, 1996b; Low et al., 2002). In many societies, resources are exchanged, and the patterns are interesting. In bride-price societies, in which men “buy” their wives with, cattle, horses, and so on, women typically make large contributions to subsistence and have high economic and reproductive value; most of these societies are polygynous, and wealthier men get to marry “earlier and more often” than poorer men; in return, they reap the value of several women’s labor. In dowry systems, in which the bride’s father pays...

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