Supplementary material from "The global geography of human subsistence"
Posted on 2018-09-20 - 09:07
How humans obtain food has dramatically reshaped ecosystems and altered both the trajectory of human history and the characteristics of human societies. Our species' subsistence varies widely, from predominantly foraging strategies, to plant-based agriculture and animal husbandry. The extent to which environmental, social and historical factors have driven such variation is currently unclear. Prior attempts to resolve long-standing debates on this topic have been hampered by an over-reliance on narrative arguments, small and geographically narrow samples, and by contradictory findings. Here we overcome these methodological limitations by applying multi-model inference tools developed in biogeography to a global dataset (818 societies). Although some have argued that unique conditions and events determine each society's particular subsistence strategy, we find strong support for a general global pattern in which a limited set of environmental, social and historical factors predicts an essential characteristic of all human groups: how we obtain our food.
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C. Gavin, Michael; Kavanagh, Patrick H.; Haynie, Hannah J.; Bowern, Claire; Ember, Carol R.; D. Gray, Russell; et al. (2018). Supplementary material from "The global geography of human subsistence". The Royal Society. Collection. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.4226900.v2
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AUTHORS (12)
MC
Michael C. Gavin
PK
Patrick H. Kavanagh
HH
Hannah J. Haynie
CB
Claire Bowern
CE
Carol R. Ember
RD
Russell D. Gray
FM
Fiona M. Jordan
KK
Kathryn R. Kirby
GK
Geoff Kushnick
BL
Bobbi S. Low
BV
Bruno Vilela
CA
Carlos A. Botero