Unique social structure of hunter-gatherers explained

Sex equality in residential decision-making explains the unique social structure of hunter-gatherers, a new UCL study reveals. Previous research has noted the low level of relatedness in hunter-gatherer bands. This is surprising because humans depend on close kin to raise offspring, so generally exhibit a strong preference for living close to parents, siblings and grandparents. The new study is the first to demonstrate the relationship between sex equality in residential decision-making and group composition. In work conducted over two years, researchers from the Hunter-Gatherer Resilience Project in UCL Anthropology lived among populations of hunter-gatherers in Congo and the Philippines. They collected genealogical data on kinship relations, between-camp mobility and residence patterns by ing hundreds of people. This information allowed the researchers to understand how individuals in each community they visited were related to each other.