In the course of human events
The Political Economy of Mass Printing: Legitimacy and Technological Change in the Ottoman Empire
Metin Coşgel, Thomas Miceli & Jared Rubin
Journal of Comparative Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
New technologies have not always been greeted with full enthusiasm. Although the Ottomans were quick to adopt advancements in military technology, they waited almost three centuries to sanction printing in Ottoman Turkish (in Arabic characters). Printing spread relatively rapidly throughout Europe following the invention of the printing press in 1450 despite resistance by interest groups and temporary restrictions in some countries. We explain differential reaction to technology through a political economy approach centered on the legitimizing relationships between rulers and their agents (e.g., military, religious, or secular authorities). The Ottomans regulated the printing press heavily to prevent the loss it would have caused to the ruler's net revenue by undermining the legitimacy provided by religious authorities. On the other hand, the legitimizing relationship between European religious and political authorities was undermined over a century prior to the invention of the press. European rulers thus had little reason to stop the spread of printing as public policy, nor could the Church have stopped it had it wanted to. The Ottomans eventually sanctioned printing in Arabic script in the eighteenth century after alternative sources of legitimacy emerged.
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The naturalness of (many) social institutions: Evolved cognition as their foundation
Pascal Boyer & Michael Bang Petersen
Journal of Institutional Economics, March 2012, Pages 1-25
Abstract:
Most standard social science accounts only offer limited explanations of institutional design, i.e. why institutions have common features observed in many different human groups. Here we suggest that these features are best explained as the outcome of evolved human cognition, in such domains as mating, moral judgment and social exchange. As empirical illustrations, we show how this evolved psychology makes marriage systems, legal norms and commons management systems intuitively obvious and compelling, thereby ensuring their occurrence and cultural stability. We extend this to propose under what conditions institutions can become ‘natural', compelling and legitimate, and outline probable paths for institutional change given human cognitive dispositions. Explaining institutions in terms of these exogenous factors also suggests that a general theory of institutions as such is neither necessary nor in fact possible. What are required are domain-specific accounts of institutional design in different domains of evolved cognition.
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The Arabian Cradle: Mitochondrial Relicts of the First Steps along the Southern Route out of Africa
Verónica Fernandes et al.
American Journal of Human Genetics, 10 February 2012, Pages 347-355
Abstract:
A major unanswered question regarding the dispersal of modern humans around the world concerns the geographical site of the first human steps outside of Africa. The "southern coastal route" model predicts that the early stages of the dispersal took place when people crossed the Red Sea to southern Arabia, but genetic evidence has hitherto been tenuous. We have addressed this question by analyzing the three minor west-Eurasian haplogroups, N1, N2, and X. These lineages branch directly from the first non-African founder node, the root of haplogroup N, and coalesce to the time of the first successful movement of modern humans out of Africa, ∼60 thousand years (ka) ago. We sequenced complete mtDNA genomes from 85 Southwest Asian samples carrying these haplogroups and compared them with a database of 300 European examples. The results show that these minor haplogroups have a relict distribution that suggests an ancient ancestry within the Arabian Peninsula, and they most likely spread from the Gulf Oasis region toward the Near East and Europe during the pluvial period 55-24 ka ago. This pattern suggests that Arabia was indeed the first staging post in the spread of modern humans around the world.
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Benoît Testé et al.
European Journal of Social Psychology, March 2012, Pages 263-268
Abstract:
The acceptance of migrant populations and the definition of an "appropriate" migrant are controversial issues in many countries. The present research focuses on the ideological determinants of how newcomers are evaluated by a host population in a Western country with a strongly rooted meritocratic ideology. We carried out two studies to examine how the expression of meritocratic beliefs by a male potential migrant affects the way he is evaluated by the host population. We measured the host population's perception of the potential migrant's ability to integrate into society, his tendency to adopt the host country's culture, and the general desirability of his world vision for all newcomers. We also noted the host population's judgments of the target's agency and communality. The results showed that a potential newcomer who expresses a strong (vs. weak) belief in a just world (Study 1) or an internal (vs. external) locus of control (Study 2) is evaluated more favorably by the host population. In addition, judgments of the target's integration capacity were only mediated by his perceived agency. We discuss these results in the light of work on the meritocratic ideology and intercultural relations.
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Political orientation and images of the United States in Italy
Elena Trifiletti et al.
Social Behavior and Personality, February 2012, Pages 85-91
Abstract:
Image theory was used in this study to assess the images that Italian adults with different political ideologies have of the United States. In addition to the ally, barbarian, enemy, and imperialist images, a new image, that of the father, was introduced. It was found that right-wing respondents endorsed the father and ally images of Americans, while left-wing respondents perceived Americans as barbarians. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.
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Plaintiffs v. Privateers: Litigation and Foreign Affairs in the Federal Courts, 1816-1822
Kevin Arlyck
Law and History Review, February 2012, Pages 245-278
Abstract:
On January 24, 1817, Don Juan Stoughton, the Spanish consul in Boston, wrote to his colleague in Baltimore, Don Pablo Chacon, to thank him for his recent efforts in supplying Stoughton with information about the Mangore, a private armed vessel recently arrived in the Chesapeake. Stoughton believed that the privateer was responsible for the capture of a Spanish-owned merchant ship that had recently turned up in Massachusetts. Stoughton had recently filed suit in federal district court to recover the vessel and its cargo on behalf of the rightful owners, but to do so he had to establish that, in the course of its recent expedition, the Mangore had violated federal law prescribing American neutrality. In addition to providing intelligence in this matter, Chacon had secured local counsel to represent Stoughton at depositions of privateer crew members being taken in Baltimore.
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Democracy and Human Development
John Gerring, Strom Thacker & Rodrigo Alfaro
Journal of Politics, January 2012, Pages 1-17
Abstract:
Does democracy improve the quality of life for its citizens? Scholars have long assumed that it does, but recent research has called this orthodoxy into question. This article reviews this body of work, develops a series of causal pathways through which democracy might improve social welfare, and tests two hypotheses: (a) that a country's level of democracy in a given year affects its level of human development and (b) that its stock of democracy over the past century affects its level of human development. Using infant mortality rates as a core measure of human development, we conduct a series of time-series-cross-national statistical tests of these two hypotheses. We find only slight evidence for the first proposition, but substantial support for the second. Thus, we argue that the best way to think about the relationship between democracy and development is as a time-dependent, historical phenomenon.
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The paradox of nationalism: The common denominator of radical right and radical left euroscepticism
Daphne Halikiopoulou, Kyriaki Nanou & Sofia Vasilopoulou
European Journal of Political Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
What can explain the strong euroscepticism of radical parties of both the right and the left? This article argues that the answer lies in the paradoxical role of nationalism as a central element in both party families, motivating opposition towards European integration. Conventionally, the link between nationalism and euroscepticism is understood solely as a prerogative of radical right-wing parties, whereas radical left-wing euroscepticism is associated with opposition to the neoliberal character of the European Union. This article contests this view. It argues that nationalism cuts across party lines and constitutes the common denominator of both radical right-wing and radical left-wing euroscepticism. It adopts a mixed-methods approach, combining intensive case study analysis with quantitative analysis of party manifestos. First, it traces the link between nationalism and euroscepticism in Greece and France in order to demonstrate the internal validity of the argument. It then undertakes a cross-country statistical estimation to assess the external validity of the argument and its generalisability across Europe.
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Income and democracy: Evidence from system GMM estimates
Benedikt Heid, Julian Langer & Mario Larch
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does higher income cause democracy? Accounting for the dynamic nature and high persistence of income and democracy, we find a statistically significant positive relation between income and democracy for a postwar period sample of up to 150 countries. Our results are robust across different measures of democracy and instrumentation strategies.
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Social networks and cooperation in hunter-gatherers
Coren Apicella et al.
Nature, 26 January 2012, Pages 497-501
Abstract:
Social networks show striking structural regularities, and both theory and evidence suggest that networks may have facilitated the development of large-scale cooperation in humans. Here, we characterize the social networks of the Hadza, a population of hunter-gatherers in Tanzania. We show that Hadza networks have important properties also seen in modernized social networks, including a skewed degree distribution, degree assortativity, transitivity, reciprocity, geographic decay and homophily. We demonstrate that Hadza camps exhibit high between-group and low within-group variation in public goods game donations. Network ties are also more likely between people who give the same amount, and the similarity in cooperative behaviour extends up to two degrees of separation. Social distance appears to be as important as genetic relatedness and physical proximity in explaining assortativity in cooperation. Our results suggest that certain elements of social network structure may have been present at an early point in human history. Also, early humans may have formed ties with both kin and non-kin, based in part on their tendency to cooperate. Social networks may thus have contributed to the emergence of cooperation.
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The establishment of communication systems depends on the scale of competition
Miguel dos Santos et al.
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
How communication systems emerge and remain stable is an important question in both cognitive science and evolutionary biology. For communication to arise, not only must individuals cooperate by signaling reliable information, but they must also coordinate and perpetuate signals. Most studies on the emergence of communication in humans typically consider scenarios where individuals implicitly share the same interests. Likewise, most studies on human cooperation consider scenarios where shared conventions of signals and meanings cannot be developed de novo. Here, we combined both approaches with an economic experiment where participants could develop a common language, but under different conditions fostering or hindering cooperation. Participants endeavored to acquire a resource through a learning task in a computer-based environment. After this task, participants had the option to transmit a signal (a color) to a fellow group member, who would subsequently play the same learning task. We varied the way participants competed with each other (either global scale or local scale) and the cost of transmitting a signal (either costly or noncostly) and tracked the way in which signals were used as communication among players. Under global competition, players signaled more often and more consistently, scored higher individual payoffs, and established shared associations of signals and meanings. In addition, costly signals were also more likely to be used under global competition; whereas under local competition, fewer signals were sent and no effective communication system was developed. Our results demonstrate that communication involves both a coordination and a cooperative dilemma and show the importance of studying language evolution under different conditions influencing human cooperation.
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Evolution of human-driven fire regimes in Africa
Sally Archibald, Carla Staver & Simon Levin
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Human ability to manipulate fire and the landscape has increased over evolutionary time, but the impact of this on fire regimes and consequences for biodiversity and biogeochemistry are hotly debated. Reconstructing historical changes in human-derived fire regimes empirically is challenging, but information is available on the timing of key human innovations and on current human impacts on fire; here we incorporate this knowledge into a spatially explicit fire propagation model. We explore how changes in population density, the ability to create fire, and the expansion of agropastoralism altered the extent and seasonal distribution of fire as modern humans arose and spread through Africa. Much emphasis has been placed on the positive effect of population density on ignition frequency, but our model suggests this is less important than changes in fire spread and connectivity that would have occurred as humans learned to light fires in the dry season and to transform the landscape through grazing and cultivation. Different landscapes show different limitations; we show that substantial human impacts on burned area would only have started ∼4,000 B.P. in open landscapes, whereas they could have altered fire regimes in closed/dissected landscapes by ∼40,000 B.P. Dry season fires have been the norm for the past 200-300 ky across all landscapes. The annual area burned in Africa probably peaked between 4 and 40 kya. These results agree with recent paleocarbon studies that suggest that the biomass burned today is less than in the recent past in subtropical countries.
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Limitations imposed by wearing armour on Medieval soldiers' locomotor performance
Graham Askew, Federico Formenti & Alberto Minetti
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences, 22 February 2012, Pages 640-644
Abstract:
In Medieval Europe, soldiers wore steel plate armour for protection during warfare. Armour design reflected a trade-off between protection and mobility it offered the wearer. By the fifteenth century, a typical suit of field armour weighed between 30 and 50 kg and was distributed over the entire body. How much wearing armour affected Medieval soldiers' locomotor energetics and biomechanics is unknown. We investigated the mechanics and the energetic cost of locomotion in armour, and determined the effects on physical performance. We found that the net cost of locomotion (Cmet) during armoured walking and running is much more energetically expensive than unloaded locomotion. Cmet for locomotion in armour was 2.1-2.3 times higher for walking, and 1.9 times higher for running when compared with Cmet for unloaded locomotion at the same speed. An important component of the increased energy use results from the extra force that must be generated to support the additional mass. However, the energetic cost of locomotion in armour was also much higher than equivalent trunk loading. This additional cost is mostly explained by the increased energy required to swing the limbs and impaired breathing. Our findings can predict age-associated decline in Medieval soldiers' physical performance, and have potential implications in understanding the outcomes of past European military battles.
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The advantage of multiple cultural parents in the cultural transmission of stories
Kimmo Eriksson & Julie Coultas
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent mathematical modeling of repeated cultural transmission has shown that the rate at which culture is lost (due to imperfect transmission) will crucially depend on whether individuals receive transmissions from many cultural parents or only from one. However, the modeling assumptions leading up to this conclusion have so far not been empirically assessed. Here we do this for the special case of transmission chains where each individual either receives the same story twice from one cultural parent (and retransmits twice to a cultural child) or receives possibly different versions of the story from two cultural parents (and then retransmits to two cultural children). For this case, we first developed a more general mathematical model of cultural retention that takes into account the possibility of dependence of error rates between transmissions. In this model, under quite plausible assumptions, chains with two cultural parents will have superior retention of culture. This prediction was then tested in two experiments using both written and oral modes of transmission. In both cases, superior retention of culture was found in chains with two cultural parents. Estimation of model parameters indicated that error rates were not identical and independent between transmissions; instead, a primacy effect was suggested, such that the first transmission tends to have higher fidelity than the second transmission.
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Steffen Wischmann, Dario Floreano & Laurent Keller
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
One of the key innovations during the evolution of life on earth has been the emergence of efficient communication systems, yet little is known about the causes and consequences of the great diversity within and between species. By conducting experimental evolution in 20 independently evolving populations of cooperatively foraging simulated robots, we found that historical contingency in the occurrence order of novel phenotypic traits resulted in the emergence of two distinct communication strategies. The more complex foraging strategy was less efficient than the simpler strategy. However, when the 20 populations were placed in competition with each other, the populations with the more complex strategy outperformed the populations with the less complex strategy. These results demonstrate a tradeoff between communication efficiency and robustness and suggest that stochastic events have important effects on signal evolution and the outcome of competition between distinct populations.
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John Gibson & David McKenzie
Economic Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper presents results of innovative surveys that tracked academic high-achievers from five countries to wherever they moved in the world to directly measure at the micro level the channels through which high-skilled emigration affects sending countries. There are high levels of emigration and of return and the income gains to the best and brightest from migrating are an order of magnitude greater than any other effect. Most high-skilled migrants from poorer countries remit but involvement in trade and foreign direct investment is rare. Fiscal costs vary widely but are much less than the benefits to the migrants themselves.
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Development and the Urban and Rural Geography of Mexican Emigration to the United States
Erin Hamilton & Andrés Villarreal
Social Forces, December 2011, Pages 661-683
Abstract:
Past research on international migration from Mexico to the United States uses geographically-limited data and analyzes emigrant-sending communities in isolation. Theories supported by this research may not explain urban emigration, and this research does not consider connections between rural and urban Mexico. In this study we use national data from Mexico to investigate rural and urban emigration. We find that a central motivation for emigration - self-insurance through labor market diversification - is most relevant to less rural, non-metropolitan places. Paradoxically, while Mexican cities have the lowest rates of emigration, the rural places that are spatially proximate to cities have the highest rates. These findings suggest that while urban development retains emigrants within city borders, it may generate emigration out of neighboring rural places.