Evidence map›Paper›PMID 26578766›Full record

ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2015

Transition to farming more likely for small, conservative groups with property rights, but increased productivity is not essential.

Elizabeth M Gallagher, Stephen J Shennan, Mark G Thomas

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
7citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

7 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
  3. Human cooperation and evolutionary transitions in individuality.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023
    Article
  4. The evolution of altruism through war is highly sensitive to population structure and to civilian and fighter mortality.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021
    Article
  5. Article
  6. Article
  7. Explaining variation in the kinship composition of mammal groups.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology
    Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

3 authors.

Elizabeth M GallagherResearch Department of Genetics, Evolution, & Environment, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom; Centre for Mathematics, Physics, and Engineering in the Life Sciences and Experimental Biology, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom; e.gallagher.12@ucl.ac.uk.
Stephen J ShennanInstitute of Archaeology, University College London, London, WC1H 0PY, United Kingdom.
Mark G ThomasResearch Department of Genetics, Evolution, & Environment, University College London, London, WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom;

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Theories for the origins of agriculture are still debated, with a range of different explanations offered. Computational models can be used to test these theories and explore new hypotheses; Bowles and Choi [Bowles S, Choi J-K (2013) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 110(22):8830-8835] have developed one such model. Their model shows the coevolution of farming and farming-friendly property rights, and by including climate variability, replicates the timings for the emergence of these events seen in the archaeological record. Because the processes modeled occurred a long time ago, it can be difficult to justify exact parameter values; hence, we propose a fitting to idealized outcomes (FIO) method to explore the model's parameter space in more detail. We have replicated the model of Bowles and Choi, and used the FIO method to identify complexities and interactions of the model previously unidentified. Our results indicate that the key parameters for the emergence of farming are group structuring, group size, conservatism, and farming-friendly property rights (lending further support to Bowles and Choi's original proposal). We also find that although advantageous, it is not essential that farming productivity be greater than foraging productivity for farming to emerge. In addition, we highlight how model behaviors can be missed when gauging parameter sensitivity via a fix-all-but-one variation approach.

Indexed as

AgricultureComputer SimulationModels, TheoreticalHumansagent-based modelingfitting to idealized outcomesNeolithic revolutionproperty rightssimulation

Identifiers

PMID26578766
PMCPMC4655578

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.