研究人员发现，相对于其他类人猿，人类的狩猎采集者和自给自足的农民在生存上花费更多的能量，但时间更短，每小时获得的能量要多得多，并取得类似的能量效率。这些发现修正了人们对人类能量进化的理解，并表明人类主要通过提高能量获取率来承担扩张的能量预算，而不是通过节能的适应性，如经济的双足或复杂的工具使用来降低生存成本和提高生存的能量效率。研究人员认为，人类生存策略所节省的时间为中心地点的社会互动和社会学习提供了更多的闲暇时间，对累积性文化进化至关重要。
Title: The energetics of uniquely human subsistence strategies
Author: Thomas S. Kraft, Vivek V. Venkataraman, Ian J. Wallace, Alyssa N. Crittenden, Nicholas B. Holowka, Jonathan Stieglitz, Jacob Harris, David A. Raichlen, Brian Wood, Michael Gurven, Herman Pontzer
Issue&Volume: 2021-12-24
Abstract: The suite of derived human traits, including enlarged brains, elevated fertility rates, and long developmental periods and life spans, imposes extraordinarily high energetic costs relative to other great apes. How do human subsistence strategies accommodate our expanded energy budgets We found that relative to other great apes, human hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers spend more energy but less time on subsistence, acquire substantially more energy per hour, and achieve similar energy efficiencies. These findings revise our understanding of human energetic evolution by indicating that humans afford expanded energy budgets primarily by increasing rates of energy acquisition, not through energy-saving adaptations such as economical bipedalism or sophisticated tool use that decrease subsistence costs and improve the energetic efficiency of subsistence. We argue that the time saved by human subsistence strategies provides more leisure time for social interaction and social learning in central-place locations and would have been critical for cumulative cultural evolution.
DOI: abf0130
Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abf0130