The present research investigates food sharing and labor sharing practices of 98 nonindustrial societies. The aims are to: 1) document the frequency and scope of sharing, and 2) test the theory that greater sharing is adaptive in societies subject to more resource stress (including natural hazards).

Using a cross-cultural sample of 91 societies, this paper draws on ecological theory to test if unpredictable environments will favor subsistence diversification. The general hypothesis is that societies with high climate unpredictability and resource stress would exhibit more subsistence diversity than societies in more stable climates. The authors examined four environmental and resource stress variables while controlling for temperature variance, subsistence activity, and phylogeny. Support was found for 2 of the 4 variables--chronic scarcity and environmental instability. In the discussion they suggest that more commonly observed events (e.g. annual hunger and climate unpredictability) may give people more motivation to change subsistence than rarer events (e.g. natural hazards and famine).

This study utilizes Bayesian statistics to test the associations between harsh environments (specifically those with higher degrees of climate variability and relatively lower average temperature and precipitation) and alloparental care in societies throughout the world. Results support the hypothesis that societies in harsher environments show higher rates of alloparental care and that societies with higher rates of starvation and resource stress exhibit lower rates of alloparental care. The authors explain this theorizing that in the former relative costs are sufficiently outweighed by the benefits of this type of cooperation and in the latter they are not. They conclude that their results support the plasticity of human alloparenting as a response to varying ecology.

Using data from 97 Austronesian-speaking societies, this paper asks two research questions: 1) have religious and political authority co-evolved and 2) have the two institutions tended to become differentiated or unified? By applying phylogenetic methods, the findings show that in Austronesian societies, religious and political authorities are mutually interdependent; however, there is insufficient evidence to support any differentiation or unification of the two over time.

The research examines daily food sharing norms of 73 preindustrial societies from the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. Multilevel regression models reveal that hunting and less predictable environments are not indicative of everyday food sharing, but offer support for many other predictions. Animal husbandry, external trade, daily labor sharing, and the presence of food storage are all predictive of daily food sharing practices whereas sharing is less common amongst large and stratified societies. These results align with evolutionary theories for food sharing practices.

This study follows the theoretical construct of general cultural tightness and looseness (TL). Tightness is thought to be adaptive when facing socioecological threat, such as resource stress, since it involves a greater amount of cooperation. The study asks: "Why do some societies have relatively standardized or uniform clothing and adornment, whereas others have considerable variability across individuals?", which is connected to the broader question of why some societies show more within-group variation. The authors use a sample of 80 non-industrial societies from SCSS, to explore the relationship between general cultural tightness and standardization or synchrony in dress. The results support that tighter societies have more uniformity in dress and that resource stress is a predictor of synchrony. However, it is not supported that egalitarian societies have more synchrony, and that tightness is positively predicted by resource stress.

Why do humans have long childhoods and slow physical growth rates compared to nonhuman primates? The embodied capital theory (ECT) posits that the hard-to-extract, energy-packed resources sought by humans require more complex cognitive and physical skills, which are acquired during a longer development period. The authors of this article test this theory through a comparative analysis of different forms of resource types and skill level by age in 28 different societies. Their findings support ECT, suggesting that long childhoods evolved as a period to develop the skills required for extracting complex resources in foraging societies.

This study uses Bayesian phylogenetic regression modelling across 131 largely non-industrial societies to test how variation of punishment is impacted by social, economic, and political organization. The authors focus on the presence of norm violations and types of punishments, and explores their relationships. The norm violations include adultery, rape, religious violations, food violations, and war cowardice. While the types of punishment are reputational, material, physical, or education. This study suggests a hypothesis for each type of punishment in relation to socioecological variables.

This study explores predictors of variation in two dimensions of marital residence patterns among hunter-gatherers: 1) the tendency toward patrilocality versus matrilocality and 2) the tendency toward unilocality versus bilocality.

This article uses the Standard Cross-Cultural Samples to test the relationship between disease and economic growth among sub-Saharan African societies. The authors suggest that a higher disease prevalence limits social integration and economic development since pre-colonial times. The variable measuring economic growth is the complexity of large or impressive structures. The hypotheses are that 1) pathogen stress is negatively correlated to the presence of complex buildings, and 2) pathogen stress is positively correlated to increased ethnic diversity. The results support both hypotheses, and there are additional results, like 1) the negative correlation between pathogen stress and current income per capita and 2) the negative correlation between the increased ethnic diversity and current income per capita. Overall, this article shows the robust relationship between disease and economic development.