Hunting, particularly when it involves large game that is extensively shared, has been suggested to serve as a form of costly signaling by hunters, serving to attract mates and allies or to deter competitors. Empirical evidence presented elsewhere on turtle hunting practiced by Meriam people of...

Small-scale human societies range from foraging bands with a strong egalitarian ethos to more economically stratified agrarian and pastoral societies. We explain this variation in inequality using a dynamic model in which a population's long-run steady-state level of inequality depends on the...

We propose an explanation of cooperation among unrelated members of a social group, in which providing group benefits evolves because it constitutes an honest signal of the member's quality as a mate, coalition partner or competitor, and therefore results in advantageous alliances for those...