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inter-group cooperation, shotgun hunting, hunter-gatherers, Congo Basin, multi-level modeling, bushmeat
Abstract:
Understanding the dynamics of inter-group cooperation in human adaptation has been the
subject of recent empirical and theoretical studies in evolutionary anthropology, beginning to
fill gaps in our knowledge of how interactions across political, economic and social domains
can—and often do—lead to stable, large-scale cooperation. Here we investigate dyadic
intergroup cooperation in shotgun hunting in the Republic of the Congo. In the Congo Basin,
inter-group cooperation between foragers and farmers is at the center of an exchange system
maintained by traditional norms and institutions such as fictive kinship. Here, we focused on
what factors predict cooperative shotgun hunting exchanges between BaYaka and Yambe.
We conducted structured interviews with 48 BaYaka hunters and 18 Yambe men who
organize hunts in a village along the Motaba River. We used Bayesian multilevel regression
models to investigate the influence of Yambe and BaYaka attributes on probability of dyadic
cooperation. We found that BaYaka men’s reputations as skilled hunters and their family size
each predicted cooperation in shotgun hunting, whereas there was no effect of Yambe
attributes (status, wealth, family size). We discuss the results in terms of evolutionary models
of men as hunters and inter-group cooperation, as well as biodiversity conservation
implications.
